Clearing in the West: My own story

Gx pais

UDIMEASTTACIS
AIBERCAEASIS

CLEARING IN THE WEST

BOOKS BY NELLIE L. McCLUNG

SowincG SEEDS IN DANNY.
THE SECOND CHANCE.
PuRPLE SPRINGS.
PAINTED FIRES,

ALL We LIKE SHEEP.

Bre Goop To YOURSELF.
FLOWERS FOR THE LivING.

CLEARING IN THE
WEST

My Own Story

BY
NELLIE L. McCLUNG

TORONTO
THOMAS ALLEN

Copyright, Canada, 1935
By
THOMAS ALLEN
TORONTO

UNIVERSITY
OF ALBERTA LIBRARY

Printed in Oansda

T H BEST PRINTING CO., LIMITED
TORONTO, ONT.

To
My ELDEST BROTHER,
WILLIAM ScoTT Mooney,
IN LOVING MEMORY.

CONTENTS

THE YOUNGEST OF SIX - -
THe FAMILY - - - - - 7
TyE House AND THE PEOPLE
ECHOES FROM THE WEST - -
THE DECISION - es ee
WE ARRIVE rr
ON THE TRAIL - - - 7 7
COMPANIONS ON THE WAY -
THE First WINTER - - - -

SPRING CAME AT LAST, BRINGING

NEIGHBORS - - - - - 7
THE HEN-HOUSE DooR - - -
SoctAL ACTIVITIES - - - -
THE CHURCH AND THE SCHOOL
PICNICS - - es = ee
TikE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR
MEN AND MACHINES - - - -
LIMITATIONS - - - - - -
RETRIBUTION - - - - 7
My First Sicut of BRANDON
CHRISTMAS DAY - - - - -
A VISIT FROM THE TEACHER -
TROUBLE IN THE NorRTH WEST
THE Tracic ENDING - - -
THE DRAMATEURS - - - -
THE PARTY ~ 2 es me ee
THE FAMILY IS EXTENDED -
HANDS ACROSS THE SEA - -
Tre First SORROW - - - -
WHEN THE Door OPENED
WINNIPEG IN 1889 -

CHAPTER

XXXI.
XXXII.
XXXII.
XXXIV.
XXXV.

go XXXVI.
XXXVII.
XXXVITI.
o XXXIX,

XXKXX.

XXXXI.
XXXXII.
XXXXIII.
XXXXIV.

CONTENTS

My First SCHOOL - - - - -
WINDS OF THE WORLD - - - -
Raw MATERIAL - - - - - -
THE YOUNG EVANGELISTS - - -
I Saw E. Cora HIND - - - -
My First PoLiticAL MEETING -
MANITOU - - - = = = - =
SUMMER HOLIDAYS - - - - -
IN WHICH THE FIRST PART OF MY

LIFE ENDS - - - - * = -

LIFE Goes ON, No MATTER WHO
DIES - «= = = = «© 5s = 5

TREHERNE - - - - - - - =
THE ROYAL VISIT - - - = -
THE FARM IN 1895 - - - + -
COMMENCEMENT ee eee

- 321

- 333

CLEARING IN THE WEST

CHAPTER I
THE YOUNGEST OF SIX

SNOW comes early and often in Grey County, Ontario.
In 1873 it fell heavily on October the twentieth, in thick
wet blobs that sent the cattle into the straw stacks to
escape the driving storm. The horse-power threshing
machine at Robert Lowery’s farm, near Chatsworth, was
forced to give in to the storm at four o’clock in the after-
noon, and let the hands go home, because the sheaves were
too wet to go through the separator.

When young Will Mooney, who, though only fifteen
was as good as a man, and had been cutting bands all
day, reached his home, on the Garafraxa road, he was wet
and cold and hungry, but the sight of the doctor’s cutter
at the front door drove out every sensation but one of
extreme anxiety and quickened his steps into a run. He
opened the back door softly, met by a rush of hot air, in
which there was a trace of carbolic acid and warming
flannels and fresh bread.

Two of the neighbor women, Mrs. Edward Lowery
and Mrs. Charlton were in the kitchen, talking excitedly
though in subdued tones; the matter of the doctor was
under discussion. ‘‘We did not need him,” said Mrs.
Lowery, “and Mrs. Mooney did not want him. What is
there for a doctor to do in a perfectly natural birth? We
brought her through before, and could have done it again,
a doctor is all right in case of a broken arm or maybe
scarlet fever, but an increase in the population is a
natural thing surely.”

Her companion spoke up. “I gave him a look when
he asked be if I had scrubbed my hands in carbolic, I
said, young man, we use soft soap here, and we’ve found _
it very good, and I may say, women have helped eachv

8

4 CLEARING IN THE WEST

other here for a long time, and we have not lost a case
yet. I hope your record will be as good when you’ve been
here as long.” Then they noticed that Will had come in,
and motioned to him to be quiet.

“Is mother sick?” he asked anxiously.

“She’ll be worse before she is better,” Mrs. Lowery
replied mysteriously. ‘Dr. Dumball is here now, your
father brought him and it will soon be over. Everything
is all right. You are going to have a little brother or
sister, Willie. ... Come over here to the stove, and get off
your wet shoe-packs. Tish will get you dry clothes, you’re
soaked to the skin, I know.”

Tish, a fine young women of twenty-one, who had
been helping in the kitchen for the last two months, pro-
duced a pair of dry socks from a basket of clean clothes
under the long table, and taking his overcoat shook the
snow off it, at the back door, and hung it in the passage.

Then she went back to her bread, which was just
ready for the oven. In birth or death, or any other
human upheaval, a batch of good light bread never comes
amiss.

“Is mother very sick, Tish?” Will asked again.

“Bad enough, I guess,” Tish said, shoving a pan of
bread into the high oven, “but you know she never lets
on. I was talking to her half an hour ago; she said she
thought you’d be home soon and to be sure and get you to
change your shirt too.”

She felt his grey flannel shoulders.

“It’s just a little damp—but slip upstairs and put on
a dry one, she’ll be asking.”

“T hope it is a boy,” Will said thoughtfully, when he
came downstairs. ‘We've girls enough.”

Hannah, three years old, was sitting quietly in her
high chair, playing with a counter of colored beads, and
took no notice of this bit of brotherly candor.

“If it is as nice a little girl as Hannah, she’ll be
welcome,” Tish remarked. ‘“She’s the best child I ever

THE YOUNGEST OF SIX 5
saw. She has been sitting there for an hour; you’d think
she knew.”

When the news broke with the shrill cry of the infant,
uttering the age-old protest, Will was somewhat taken
back, and disappointed. It was a girl!

He ran out to tell his father who was in the big barn
flailing peas.”

An hour later, Will was let in to see his mother, who
lay in a high four-poster bed, in the bedroom off the
parlor.

He kissed her affectionately and asked her how she
was feeling. She told him to look behind her, and there
in a new white shaw] he saw a wrinkled little face framed
in jet black hair, with two small pink fists doubled up
beside its cheeks.

He was sorry for his mother; she must be disappointed
too, and it wasn’t her fault, so he kissed her again, and
told her it was all right. The Irelands had three girls too,
and the Charltons had four, and maybe the next one
would be a boy.

My first memory is of a snowy afternoon too, one that
seemed likely to last forever. I had stationed myself on
a stool in front of a window and inside the lace curtain
to watch for Lizzie, and Hannah and George and Jack
coming home from school. At first it was pleasant to
watch the snow making a pattern against the dark bulk
of the barn, and putting big white knobs on the fence
posts, but my heart was too burdened to see much beauty
in anything.

I had heard a bit of bad news! One of the neighbor
girls, named Hattie—I forget her last name—came over
to borrow something, and I hid behind the curtain when
the dog barked a warning and I saw her coming. I did
not like Hattie, or any one of her unpalatable family, and
for the same reason. They kissed me every time they
came in. Not only kissed me but tried to make me bite

6 CLEARING IN THE WEST

my tongue by chucking me under the chin. So I went
into hiding when any of the tribe drew near.

Hattie and mother talked without knowing I was in
the room, and Hattie said they were not going to have a
Christmas tree this year, for Zebbie had found out there
was no Santa Claus and it was no fun now, when there
was no one who believed. These were her very words.

I thought mother would surely contradict her, but she
didn’t. Then I made up my mind that I would wait right
there to see what Lizzie, and George and Jack and Hannah
would say. I was afraid to ask mother—afraid it was
true—I knew she would not withhold the truth, if I asked
her....

I must have begun my vigil in the forenoon, for it
seemed fully two weeks before I saw the four welcome
figures turning in at the gate, and snow balling each other
as they came down the lane. Little they knew of what
awaited them!

I got a hearing with my brother George first, and he
cautioned me about speaking to any one else, for he said
he knew exactly what to do. He could show me that
Hattie was wrong. And he did.

The night before Christmas he took me out, and
showed me the hay and oats he had placed in an old
water-trough for Santa Claus’ reindeers, charging me to
look well at it, and to observe that the roof leading to the
chimney had no tracks. I observed these things. On
Christmas morning, I was taken out again for obser-
vation, and found the hay and oats gone, and tracks
plainly visible on the snowy roof. There were other
proofs too, that thrilled me to my heart’s core. In my
stocking, hung beside the fire, were, carefully wrapped
in red tissue paper, a dappled gray tin horse, and a blue
glass mug, with “Love the Giver,” on it in white letters.

I wondered what Hattie would say to this!

That was a glorious Christmas. The whole house
was full of surprises. There were paper balls hung at the
windows, and spruce boughs glittering with diamonds

THE YOUNGEST OF SIX 7

over the doors, and a new scarf for me, dark brown, “to
match my eyes,” Elizabeth said. It looked very much like
the pale blue one Hannah used to have, and the color
made me think of the butternut dye that mother used for
carpet rags, but I am glad to record I was too much of a
lady to say so. The tin horse, all so nicely dappled, with
a red saddle painted on his back, was the high spot of
that Christmas and though he divided in two before the
day was over, I set one before the other, and had a team.
The smell of the paint on the horse was delicious to me,
and still is the real aroma of Christmas—that tin toy
smell.

I remember that Christmas, because it was the last
year that I was a true believer.

We lived a mile from Chatsworth, on the Garafraxa
road, in a stony part of the country of Grey. The stones
lay over our farm like flocks of sheep. But one can grow
accustomed to stones. They were merely a part of the
landscape to me. Our barn was a fine big one painted
red, with great doors in the loft that swung outward
to receive the winter’s hay. The hay-loft could be reached
from the inside by a ladder on the wall. Once we found a
tramp had slept in the hay-loft and “it was a mercy he
had not set fire to it.” Instead he called at the door the
next morning and thanked us for letting him stay and
was asked in for breakfast,

The house was of dressed timbers, cut from our own
logs, and the outside was white-washed, and looked very
well under the hard maples.

There was a spring of cold water coming out of a
bank behind the house, and over this little stream the milk
house was built, a small white-washed building with a
flagged floor, the centre of which was a tiny pond edged
with stones, where the milk pans stood cool and sweet.
That perpetual stream of crystal water that ran in and
ran out, losing itself in a green meadow below the house
was a fragrant memory to all of us and even after we

8 CLEARING IN THE WEST

moved to Manitoba and were comfortably established
there, my mother still mourned for that living well of
water that bubbled out of the hill and failed not in winter
or in summer. It was a “drink from the spring,” that
she craved more than anything else, when the tides of
life ran low.

Being the youngest of the six children, I received
much of my early education from my brothers and sisters.
Will, my eldest brother, who was fifteen when I was
born, was my devoted friend and champion, always. He
was a tall boy for his age; had curly brown hair, fine
brown eyes, creamy skin and red cheeks, and I think he
was my mother’s favorite child. In the winter of the
deep snow, seven years before I was born, my father had
bronchitis and it was Willie who helped mother to care
for the cattle and horses. He was only eight years old,
hardly able to swing an axe, but he chopped wood until
his nose bled. The snow was so deep that for three weeks
no sleigh could get through, and she was there alone, with
a sick man, and three small children. one a baby a month
old, and ten head of stock to feed and water. My mother
was not given to tears, but her eyes were always wet,
when she talked of that hard time, and how Will’s brave
young spirit had never faltered.

My second brother, George, two years younger than
Will, was a natural trader and a successful one. George
always had interesting things in his pockets, alleys, and
knives and pretty stones, and once a knife that in ad-
dition to two blades, had a pair of scissors which shut
up like a blade. I remember hearing George closely
questioned on the subject of “steel knuckles”, which, in
some mysterious manner were being put in circulation in
our neighborhood, and every possible avenue of distribu-
tion was being canvassed. But George was not guilty of
any connection with this form of armaments though he
did say that he thought “steel knuckles”, plenty of “steel
knuckles”, enough for everyone, would prevent all fights,

THE YOUNGEST OF SIX 9

for everyone would be afraid to start an argument.
George's best line was jewelry, the costume jewelry of the
late seventies, and in return for a used horse-collar,
honorably earned by pulling weeds in a turnip patch, he
received a gorgeous stock of rings and tie-pins from a
band of gypsies camped on the commons. The rings and
pins were kept under a stone in the potato patch, and
George might have carried on his business free from dis-
covery but his kind heart betrayed him, as it has many
another good man.

I burned my arm one evening by falling on the stove
from my high chair, and to stay my screams, George
brought me from his treasure chest, a solitaire ruby ring,
the ruby being, as I remember it, quite large enough for
the parking light on a car. When the uproar had been
calmed and my arm was resting in a cold starch pack,
Mother had time to go into the matter of the ring, now
tightly clutched in my good hand. George told the
truth—he was never known to depart from it—and that
enterprise came to an end. But the ring, which I with an
invalid’s privilege was allowed to keep, helped more than
the starch to heal my arm.

My eldest sister, Elizabeth, deserves a whole book.
She was everybody’s friend. She could comb hair and
make curls without hurting. She could find things that
had been lost for days. She knew where everything was.
She could think of games to play and even make up
games. She could take thorns from fingers, and under-
stand how dresses got dirty. Her hair was bright brown,
and her skin clear and white; so clear and soft, that one
of the neighbor girls, (Hattie’s sister) circulated the re-
port that Lizzie Mooney washed her face every night in
buttermilk, which my mother indignantly denied. But
Elizabeth, with that fine philosophy which has helped
her over many rough places in life, said nothing, but
began to do this very thing, to see if it had any virtue,
and to-day, though she has faced hot winds in summer

10 CLEARING IN THE WEST

and cold winds in winter, she has never lost her apple
blossom complexion.

Hannah, who had the reputation of being the best
child Tish ever saw, was a round-faced little girl with
large, dark blue eyes and auburn hair, like mother’s
mother, Margaret Fullerton McCurdy. Hannah spoke
only when she had something to say and was always
listened to with respect. She could read when she was
seven, and read stories to me—on conditions. I did not
go to school until I was ten, so Hannah had several good
productive years when she measured out to me a dole of
fiction in return for sundry little chores. When she was
reading, and J was sweeping the floor, and listening in a
trance of delight to “Davy and the Goblin,” or “Children
of the New Forest,’ sometimes in my rapture I would
forget to sweep and leaning on the broom handle gaze
open-mouthed through the golden door she had opened
for me.... until the silence of the room made me re-
member my bargain.

Hannah had rather a hard deal in the matter of her
name. Mother had intended to call her “Margaret Alice,”
but a friend of hers came back to Chatsworth to visit,
and everyone was doing things for the visitor and mother
named the baby for her, “Hannah Maria Conger.” I
thought it a very beautiful name, but the owner of it has
not thought so, although she carried it gracefully and
without complaint.

My youngest brother Jack, five years my senior was a
sturdy, square little chap, given to fighting, and walking
the ridgepole of the barn. He was only five years older
than I, but I never seemed to catch up to him. There was
a selection in the readers of that day beginning:

“The rocky John Thomas,
The hedger and ditcher,
Although he was poor
Never cared to be richer,”

which never failed to draw fire from my youngest

THE YOUNGEST OF SIX 11

brother, who hated it violently. Perhaps he was repelled
by the lowly occupation of his namesake, or his lack of
ambition, but anyway it registered. I used it myself
against him, but only when I was at a safe distance. Jack
had a great distaste for anything sentimental and always
went out, when a story was being read to us, which had
anything in it of love or courtship. He said “he would
never get married. He would live with a man and keep
dogs.”

CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY

My father, John Mooney, came to Bytown in Upper Can-
ada from Ireland in the year 1830, crossing the ocean
in a sailing vessel which took ten weeks to make the
voyage. He was then a lad of eighteen, who had never
done anything but go to school, but the famines in Ire-
land were driving the young men to seek their fortunes
elsewhere; and already some of his kinsmen had made
the venture of coming to the new world. His two older
brothers, William and Thomas came with him, and a
cousin Robert Clarke.

My grandfather, William Mooney of Nenagh, Tip-
perary, near the rock of Cashel was a steward for a noble-
man, and lived in a fine stone house, “rent free, with kail
yard and byre,” and had what was considered a good
position, but the family was large and growing, so he was
quite willing to let the three eldest boys go, and outfitted
them generously with hand-woven blankets and frieze
coats.

My father’s mother, Elizabeth Scott, had died when he
was eight years old, and my grandfather had married
again, and the second family numbering five would be
enough for him to look after. Maria, my father’s sister
came out the next year, and on her arrival in Bytown,
married Robert Clarke, the cousin, who had come out
with my father.

My uncle, Tom, who was a school teacher, soon found
a position in a settlement school near Bytown. William
who could make a fiddle “do everything but talk,” was a
welcome guest at George Clark’s tavern, on the Main
street of the four-year-old village. My father went with
the shanty men, who were bringing down rafts of logs

12

THE FAMILY 13

on the “Grand River,” as the Ottawa was called then. It
was a rough life for a boy of eighteen, but wages were
good and there was plenty of companionship, and ad-
venture. Bytown, named for Colonel By, came into being
by the building of the Rideau Canal, begun in 1826 by the
Imperial Government, and a great project it was, to open
a waterway between Bytown and Kingston, a distance of
one hundred and twenty-six miles, at a cost of one mil-
lion pounds. The money came from the Old Country in
half-crowns, packed in kegs which helped to put silver in
circulation in Canada.

He remembered seeing Colonel By many times riding
on his black horse, as he watched the progress of his men,
and when many years later the name of Bytown was
changed to Ottawa, my father thought it a great pity to
lose the name of this fine soldier whom every one admired.

The shanty men, mostly French and Irish were a wild
crew, he said, with whiskey running free in every she-
been, and many a time the streets of Bytown were filled
with drunken, cursing fighters. He remembered seeing
an Irish Roman Catholic priest, with a horsewhip flog-
ging the members of his flock into a better frame of mind,
and demanding that they appear at the confessional the
next day. And they did.

After several years of logging, and many narrow
escapes from drowning, he began to think of farming as
a better and pleasanter way of living. He had earned
good wages on the river but he had saved very little.
He knew of the new gravel road that was being built
from the Georgian Bay to Toronto, in the western part of
the province, and that free grants of land could be taken
on each side of the road. He had heard about it first
from a Methodist missionary, who worked among the
Ojibways, still farther west, and who had come to By-
town to visit his relatives there.

The Shouldice family, cousins of the Mooneys, living
in Neapean, had made the move, taking the trip safely
across Georgian Bay in a bateau, by keeping close to the

14 CLEARING IN THE WEST

shore. While this matter was being turned over in his
mind, Bytown suffered an outbreak of typhoid fever, and
his brother Tom took it and died. Later in the same year
William also died, and my father, alone now, except for
his sister, Mrs. Robert Clarke, who lived in Neapean
decided to make the move.

He made the trip across the Georgian Bay in 1841, took
up the free grant of fifty acres, and by helping to chop
out the road earned another fifty acres, and then settled
down to the tremendous task of clearing his land, which
was all heavily timbered with hard maple, hemlock and
elm. Each fifty acre lot had a frontage of forty rods and
a depth of two-hundred rods. The first ten years seems
to have been a sort of endurance test, and I remember
of hearing the sad but heroic tale of one settler called
Barnes, thirteen miles down the road who actually died
of starvation and no one knew of it until he was dead.
He had tried to live on cow-cabbage, refusing to take any
of the potatoes or cow’s milk from the children.

In 1850, the township of Sullivan, on the west side of
the gravel road, was organized in proper form, with
a@ reeve and a council. The records show that John
Mooney was the first treasurer, and received for his
labors the sum of one pound, ten shillings. There were
one hundred and thirty-three ratepayers and the amount
collected was one hundred and twenty-three dollars and
eighty-one cents, and after all expenses were paid there
was a balance on hand of eight dollars and twenty-six
cents to start the new year. So the balance was on the
right side of the ledger. They built a school that year, and
there was a stipulation that any religious denomination
might use the building. Each child who attended the
-school must pay at the rate of one shilling and sixpence
per month, and each third child was to be taught free of
charge. The teacher boarded around. William Buchanan
who was the first teacher received a salary of twelve
pounds per annum.

The gravel road was called the Garafraxa, which is

THE FAMILY 16

surely as fitting a name as any gravel road ever received,
and was completed to Toronto in 1842.

My uncle Tom, the school teacher, has always been a
shadowy figure to me, leaving no trace of his personality
in my memory, though I do remember a box of old Irish
school books in calfskin bindings, yellow vellum and long
s’3 with his name written in them in violet ink. But
William, the boy who could “turn the heart in ye,” when
he played the “Irish Lament”; William with his brown
eyes and auburn hair, slim and straight as a gun barrel;
with a laugh that you would hear in a room full of people,
for the lilt of it; William who was talked of in all the
lumber camps and on the rafts, as the men were coming
down the rivers; who died in his twenty-fifth year in a
noisy room above the bar in a Bytown tavern, where he
had so often played for dances, was one of my infant
heroes, and I was disposed to boast about him, when I
played with other children, though he was dead forty
years before I was born. When I heard music that swept
my young heart with longing, I knew it was something
like the performance of my uncle William. My father
had been up the river when William died, and he never
ceased to regret his absence.

After taking up his land on the Garafraxa, my father
married Jane Shouldice, his cousin, but Jane lived only a
little over a year.

When the news went back to Nenagh, Ireland, that
Johnny’s wife had died, and that Johnny was the only
one left of the three fine lads who had sailed from
Limerick, and that he was alone on a bush farm, old
Judy Connor, one of the servants in my grandfather’s
house in Nenagh, and she was then fifty years of age,
braved the terrors of the Atlantic, and came all the way
to Sydenham to keep house for him.

In 1858 he married my mother, Letitia McCurdy, who
had come wish her mother, Margaret Fullerton McCurdy,
and a younger sister Ellen from Dundee, Scotland, the
year before. nd

16 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Judy Connor lived with them all her days, and it has
always been a regret to me that I was not born early
enough to have met Judy, in the flesh, with her belief in
fairies, and banshees.

Judy at certain times and seasons, that had to do with
the moon, took the precautionary measure of leaving a
pan of milk on the grass for the fairies to wash in. It
seems it was always done in Ireland to keep the little
people in good humor. But one night my mother, who
did not believe in fairies, gave the milk to the pigs, and
used the pan for something else, and the next day she
slipped on a stone in the milk house, and turned her
ankle, and Judy told her it was “well for her, it wasn’t
worse,” so the pan was left thereafter. When Judy lay
dying, she had everyone listening for the banshee, who
should, by all the laws of compensation and tradition,
have cried below the window, but no sound troubled the
stillness of the maple trees around the house, until Watch,
the dog, sensing that something was happening lifted his
head to the stars, and howled drearily. Judy heard him
through the shadows that were closing around her, and
opening her eyes, she looked at my mother in triumph,
“Now, thank God, I can die,” she said, and she did!

Mother’s father, Duncan McCurdy, who was of the
McCurdy’s from the Isle of Bute, had died of cholera in
the outbreak of 1856, in Dundee and it was then, with
their breadwinner gone, and under necessity to make
their own living, that the women of the family came to
Canada. An older sister, Elizabeth, was married to a
John Taylor in Dundee, and stayed behind, afterwards
emigrating to Australia.

My grandmother's two sisters had emigrated two
years before with their families, and settled in the town-
ship of Holland, east of the Garafraxa where the land was
more fertile than in Sullivan where my father settled.
As a result of this, the Holland relatives, «8s the years
went by, prospered more than we did and grew com-
paratively rich. The two aunts wee vrafuer patronizing

THE FAMILY 17

to my grandmother, whom I remember as a slight little
woman, in a gray dress, with reddish hair, who was
always ready to tell a story to me. Her two sisters,
older than she, did not even talk like anyone else, ac-
counted for by the fact, that in Scotland they had lived
in “Enbro,” and so rather despised the more commercial
city of Dundee. As a final proof of their magnificence,
in each of their homes in Holland, there was an organ,
but they did not call it that. It was the “instrument,”
and could not be played on Sunday. I was taken to one
of their homes once and there was no music from the
‘instrument ;” it stood in the corner, a complicated bulk
of carved wood, and red velvet, locked tight and
ornamented with two high and fluted gray vases of dead
grass. The red velvet, showing so enticingly through the
wood-carving called to me to poke one small finger
through and see for myself if it could be pushed back,
but some good angel stayed my hand.

CHAPTER III
THE HOUSE AND THE PEOPLE

My memory of our old house is somewhat shadowy, but
I know that smoked hams hung from the rafters in the
kitchen, and from one corner were suspended brown
festoons of dried apples, done by a paring machine which
went around the neighborhood. The walls of all the
rooms were white-washed, and only the big log beams
that held up the ceiling were left in their natural state.
The floors were pine boards and were scrubbed every
week, using very little soap, for soap yellowed the wood.
Elbow grease was the thing! The heating was done by
a huge cooking stove, with a high oven, in the kitchen
and a round heater in the front room which had a drum
upstairs to collect and radiate heat to the bedrooms.
Seats near either stove was much prized for the outer area
was very cold when the north wind swept down from the
Georgian Bay.

The floor had lengths of rag carpet in pale stripes
and there were red and brown mats, hooked in circles and
triangles. The inside doors were home-made ones and
had buttons of wood instead of latches. The two front
windows had hand-knitted curtains, done by mother, in a
fern pattern and paper Jace valentines were hung on
them.

Two pictures, I remember very well, “Winter,” and
“Autumn.” Two beautiful women—“Autumn,” wreathed
with red leaves and purple fruit, and “Winter,” dressed
in white fur with holly berries on her cap. ‘Winter,”
with her soft eyes was my ideal of beauty and I de-
termined to be just like her when I grew up, if it could be
arranged. These prints were given as premiums with the
Montreal Family Herald and Weekly Star, and there were

18

THE HOUSE AND THE PEOPLE 19

really four in the series, for I had seen “Spring,” and
“Summer,” at my aunt Ellen’s house. There was a steel
engraving of the Battle of Waterloo, which I did not like.
In it, Wellington and Blucher on their horses, were shak-
ing hands across the bodies of the slain. Dead men and
horses carpeted the field, and one young fellow was trying
to raise his head, and his face was full of pain. Jack said,
I was crazy to cry about it, for the dead men and this
wounded one were all Frenchmen and our enemies and it
served them right; but even so, he could not explain
away the dead horses.

There was another horrible black and white print,
“The Stag at Bay,” of a poor tired stag with his back
to a rock, facing a pack of fierce and snarling hounds.
He was trapped, and beaten with no hope of escape, but
he was still fighting.

There was one pretty chromo called “The Old Mill
Stream,” which showed a rapid stream, the mill race,
bright blue in color, from which a beautiful dog, a big
tawny fellow, had just saved a little girl, with golden
curls and pantalettes, from drowning. She lay on the
grass very wet and pale, but her mother was running
across the green with outstretched arms.

There was another colored picture of a girl in a long
white nightie, and golden hair holding herself out of the
water by hanging tightly to a wooden cross set in a rock.
White gulls flew over-head, and I knew she was cold and
wet.

I was taken to Sunday school in Chatsworth, by
Elizabeth and Annie Stevenson, who made a chair and
carried me when I got tired. Annie was a lovely girl, who
wore a hat with plumes and seemed to belong to us.

The Sunday school was held in the church, with green
baize curtains to divide the classes. But there was no
room for the “Busy Bees,” one Sunday so we were
taken across the road to the parsonage parlor, and the
minister’s wife told us about “Moses,” who had a little
bed of switches smeared with tar, to keep out the water,

20 CLEARING IN THE WEST

and was put in the river for safe keeping; and then she
took our collection, one copper each, tied in a knot in our
handkerchiefs. It took quite a while to extract the coins,
because we had chewed the knots. Six cents was the
day’s receipts. We stood around her when she played
her little organ, which had white teeth all right, but no
high top like the “instruments” in Holland. And she
asked us all to come back, and told us the school had
grown, so we would come there every Sunday now, and
we were glad. When I went home, and released the big
story about “Moses,” being put in the river, I was
disappointed to find they all knew it!

I received a small card each Sunday with a verse set
in a little frame of flowers, and there was a hope held out
that four small cards would be rewarded with a big one,
but I never was able to put it to the test for I could not
keep the little cards. They got lost.

My first time to be in church was at a revival meeting
held at the Sauble, where Rev. Mr. Read, the Methodist
minister of Chatsworth, was holding special services and
when father and mother went one night, they had to take
me for it seemed there wes no way of leaving me. My
mother, being a Scotch Presbyterian, did not hold with
revival services and testimony meetings and confessions,
but father was an out-and-out Methodist, and had ex-
perienced the strange, “warming of the heart,” that John
Wesley wrote about in his Journal.

We were late for the meeting and the altar call was
sounding when we entered, and crowds of people were
pressing forward; and as many more came in when we
did, we found ourselves among the seekers, and we knelt
there with the others. Mr. Read put his hand on my head
and said no child was too young to be reconciled to
God, and he was glad to receive the lambs of the flock.
I was the only child at the altar and I liked him very
much for being so friendly.

He was a tall man with brown whiskers and a cheerful
face. He moved his ears when he talked which I thought

THE HOUSE AND THE PEOPLE 21

very clever of him. I had a trick too, just learned that
day, from my brother Will. I could shut one eye and
keep the other one wide open, and I thought he might
like to see me do it. So when an old man who stuttered,
was giving his testimony and holding back the meeting
with everyone getting impatient, I kept my one eye on
the minister and the other one shut.

Mother said after we went home, that Mr. Read was
too light a man to be preaching the gospel, for when poor
old Samuel Norton was speaking he actually began to
laugh, though he had tried to turn it into a cough. My
father was loyal to the minister and said there was no
harm in a laugh at any time, and it would be better if
there were more laughter in the churches.

But mother refused to accept this, and said, there
was a time to laugh and it was not in the church. I didn’t
like to hear Mr. Read criticized, so I said I wanted to go
again for I wanted to make my peace with God, and that
stopped the argument. Mother was ready to talk to me
then, and tried to explain what it meant to be a Christian.
She said, I would have to stop mocking people; for that
was my besetting sin; though it was not so much my
fault, she said, as it was the fault of older people who
encouraged me and laughed at me. I knew who the older
people were and I was sorry that I had drawn my father
into another argument.

The only people I had ever mocked were mother’s two
aunts, who lived in Holland. The two thin old ladies who
owned the “instruments,” who dressed in black silk made
with tight bodies and full skirts, and wore mutches, and
knit with flashing steel needles. They came to visit us
once a year anyway and when that happened, father took
to the barn. He always had peas to flail when the aunts
came.

I loved to listen to them and get their stories, just as
they told them, which was not always easy, for the aunts
to save time talked at once. On account of the bad roads
in Holland, they did not get out much, and when they did

22 CLEARING IN THE WEST

they talked without a pause. I sat near them, drinking
in every word and they often said I was a nice quiet child.
When I had gathered a good earful I made my way to the
barn to tell my father, and with two bright straws for
knitting needles, I relayed what I could remember, and
so well received was my recital, I often stayed out until I
was nearly frozen. It was not only their words, but their
peculiar accent that gave my recital merit. They had a
queer droning way of speaking.

But now, having renounced the world, I knew I would
have to give this up. I must not mock my mother’s aunts!
I hoped they would not come soon, until I was stronger in
the faith, for the pleasure of seeing my father lean on his
flail] and laugh until his eyes ran with tears, was hard to
forego, and I knew so many of their stories now, it seemed
too bad to waste them. There were times when I looked
back, like the children of Israel, and longed for my
degenerate days.

The catechism helped to keep my spirits aflame. In
it I seemed to have had special mention. “What is your
name?” was one question, early in the book. “M or N,”
was the answer, so I hoped from that, that I was
numbered with the blest and for the time, at least, con-
tinued in the way.

It was a mellow evening in early autumn, for the
apples were ripe on the trees behind the milk house,
their bright red globes gleaming in the gray-green leaves,
and there was a smell of ripening grain in the air, and a
blue haze dulled the horizon, and blotted out the hills.

I was being taken down to the lower meadow by
Lizzie, the good angel of my childhood, for this was the
evening when the pigs were being killed, and my heart
was ready to break. Not that I had a pet pig or cared
about the pigs as individuals. I was a little afraid of
pigs, and thought they were greedy, ill-mannered brutes,
but even so, I felt they had a right to live, or at least to
die without pain.

THE HOUSE AND THE PEOPLE 23

All day I knew what was coming! The pigs were
being starved for the killing, and they squealed in their
pens and quarrelled among themselves. The hole was
dug for the barrel, which would be filled with boiling
water from the boiler set on stones with wood laid under.
The gruesome scaffold had been erected, and the whole
farm yard had been changed from a friendly play-ground,
to a place of evil.

We walked over the hill behind the house just as the
sun was dipping into the mist of evening, and a queer
green light came into the upper and eastern sky. Lizzie’s
hand was very comforting in mine now that my world
had gone wrong, and the sorrows of life were overflowing.
She told me she had a new pattern for a dress for me,
with a little scalloped collar, which would be edged with
turkey-red, and the tie-backs would have scalloped ends,
and the dress would have red pear] buttons, with one on
each pocket.

We sat beside the little stream just before it lost itself
in the meadow, and she found stove-pipe grass for me to
piece together into a chain.

She thought that by taking me over the hill the sounds
would not come through, but just as I had almost for-
gotten why we had come, in my delight and surprise at
the honey sandwiches which she had produced from under
her coat—the terrible cry came drilling through the hill,
and tore through us like a thousand poisoned arrows. I
knew then, that life was a place of horror, in spite of
flowers and trees, and streams, and I flung myself down
on the grass and cried my heart out in an agony of
helplessness. I remembered how she put her two kind
hands over my ears, but that piercing cry came in at
every pore of my body .

Lizzie told me God made pigs for meat for people.
They were of no other use and if they were all let live
there would be pigs everywhere, and how would I like
that? But I asked her why they had to suffer like this;
why didn’t God make them like trees or grain? They

24 CLEARING IN THE WEST .

didn’t squeal when they were cut down. God could have
done that, if He wanted to. He made everything. Lizzie
admitted she did not know why there had to be such pain
in the world; she said she often wondered, but it wasn’t
right to criticize God, His ways were always right. But
I was rebellious. I didn’t think much of the world, and
I was through with being a Christian. I didn’t love God,
and I was going to be like uncle Abner and not care for
anything, but just having a good time. I’d go to the
dances when I grew up, and put hair-oil on my hair and
stay out late. And I would mock the aunts, I would mock
them worse than ever, and I didn’t care how soon they
came, and I was through with Sunday school and would
burn my tickets.

Lizzie did not try to stem my outburst. She let me
rave on and in the raving I found relief. I knew my
words were wild and wicked, but in some way they re-
stored me. Wild words were safe with Lizzie; she would
never remember them against anybody; they fell around
her like dust that is blown away. Every family needs
one member who has the gift of listening, and forgetting.

It was quite dark when we got home, and she led me
around to the front door and we went upstairs. The
house was heavy with the smell of rendering lard, which
reminded me there would be doughnuts to-morrow and
I resolved I wouldn’t eat one—or at least very few of
them. Mother came up to see me after I had gone to bed
and told me the pigs’ suffering was all over in a minute,
and I must put it all out of my mind. Father knew
exactly how to kill a pig with the least possible amount of
suffering, and he just hated to do it too; when he was a
little boy in Ireland he always ran away to the bog when
the pigs were killed, but now he knew it had to be done
and he always did it himself, just to be sure it was done
quickly. I was glad to know that he hated to do it, for I
adored my father and couldn’t bear to think him cruel. I
ate the remainder of the honey sandwiches and went to
sleep.

THE HOUSE AND THE PEOPLE 25

People who write about their own family usually tell
much of family tyranny and misunderstanding, and in
the minds of many, parents and children are natural
enemies, but I have not much to say about parental op-
pression. My people were hard-working folk, greatly”
concerned with the problems of making a living, tired
many a time with the day’s work and perplexed with life’s
cares, but they were never too tired or busy to comfort a
sad little heart, or do their best to direct a lost young
pilgrim back to the highway of happiness.

CHAPTER IV
ECHOES FROM THE WEST

I HAVE a wistful memory of the sunlit populous farm
yard, over which fresh yellow straw drifted as the wind
blew, and where I could rove at will, without a care or a
fear. The white house under the red maples, with bright
sumach trees in front, threw back the sunshine in a
dazzle that made me wink my eyes, but I loved to look at
it. There was something about it that satisfied me. It
was so sure and safe.

As I drifted around the farm yard, I liked to sing,
swaying and dancing to my own music. Mother had
heard Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale, before she
came to Canada, and although my mother was not a
singer, she made us understand the moving power of a
great voice.

“Come, arouse you, arouse you,
My brave shepherd boy
To the fields, now and labor away,
The dew is sparkling in the beam,
The kine are thronging to the stream!”

That was all I knew but as I sang it, I could hear that
golden voice rising and falling in a rushing, sweeping
melody that sang in my veins, and wrung my heart with
emotion. I never sang this when any one could hear me
for always it made my cry....

I have heard some of the world’s great singers since
then, and felt the magic of good music, but never have
I been more transfigured or intoxicated with sweet
sounds than when, in my fancy, 1 heard the voice of

26

ECHOES FROM THE WEST vi

Jenny Lind, coming to me out of the long past, and from
far across the sea,

“The dew is sparkling in the beam,
The kine are thronging to the stream!

An Ontario farm, in the early eighties, was a busy
place, and every one on our farm, moved briskly. My
father often said of my mother that she could keep forty
people busy. She certainly could think of things for
people to do. Maybe that was one reason for my
enjoying the farm yard so much. I loved to sit on the
top rail of the fence, and luxuriantly do nothing, when I
was well out of the range of her vision. Mother herself
worked harder than any one. She was the first up in the ©
morning and the last one to go to bed at night. Our
teams were on the land, and the Monday morning wash-
ing on the line well ahead of the neighbors’. I know now
these things compensated her for the busy life she led,
for everyone has to be proud of something.

But I often wished we could all slow down a bit. I
wanted to hear more talk. I wanted to do some of it
myself too. It seemed too bad to be always rushing.
Early to bed and early to rise! To-morrow always
crashing in on the heels of to-day! I heard Will say he
was tired of working on a treadmill. I knew he felt like
the horses on the threshing machine; drawing, and walk-
ing round and around in endless circles, always going
but never arriving. Lizzie, too, who changed her dress
the very minute she came in from school and never
stopped until bed time, had often told me to play all I
could, and sleep all I could, for when I was big enough to
work there would be plenty of it to do.

Even the twenty-fourth of May which is second only
to Christmas had to have its dole of work done in the
morning, or there could be no picnic in the afternoon. I
remember rising in the gray dawn with the others, and

28 CLEARING IN THE WEST

helping in a feverish potato-planting drive, so we could
all go to a picnic at the Sauble at two o'clock.

One morning, Hannah and Jack had to have pens,
and were sent out to look for enough eggs to make the
purchase. Three dozen were found, and after a casting
up of figures—copybook ten cents, pens five cents, with
eggs ten cents, it seemed a fair hope that the purchase
could be made. Of course, there was always the danger
that eggs might go down, in which case Hannah would
have tc wait the pleasure of the hens for her copybook.

Jack was elected to carry the egg-basket for he was
ten, and Hannah was only eight. But at this juncture
dissension arose. Jack would not carry an egg-basket.
He would do anything but that. Carrying eggs and ped-
dling eggs was not a man’s job, Hannah would have to do
it. He did not care if he never got a copybook.

Mother could hardly find words to express her indig-
nation. He should be glad we had eggs to sell. Every
one sold eggs!

Jack set his jaw, and repeated his contention.
Hannah, who never wasted words, took the basket and
departed. She was half-way to the road before her
absence was noted.

This was in the early morning of a rainy day, and both
Will and George were in the house, and had heard the
discussion. “That lad will never make an Ontario
farmer,” George said.

Will was eating his breakfast, and suddenly shoved
back his plate. “I know how he feels, though I must say
it has hit him early. I am tired of the butter-and-egg
business too! It does seem that hard work, early and
late, should bring in a little money—real money that
would be a pleasure to spend. Now we have to sneak in
with a basket of eggs, or a crock of butter, when we want
a pair of boots or a new tie. ... The soil is too gravelly
and light to grow a decent crop—and the more stones we
pick off, the more come up from below. By raking and
harrowing, and coaxing them along, the fields will raise

ECHOES FROM THE WEST 29

cattle feed and chicken feed, but no big crops that can be
sold for cash. The county of Grey is on a narrow gauge
and always will be.”

Mother was standing beside the stove listening to
them.

“What can we do boys?” she said anxiously. ‘‘We’re
here and we got to live. Your father cleared every bit of
this farm, and we can’t just pick up and leave it, and
where would we go, anyway?”

Will got up, and began his preparations for going
out; a rainy day had its own activities, the seed wheat
had to go through the fanning-mill.

“Mr. Cameron has a book about a trip a man made
with a dog, from Fort Garry away west, and its a wonder-
ful country, he says; the man’s name is Butler, and he
came from Tipperary, near Nenagh too.”

_Father suddenly became interested. “Look at that
now!” he said.

“But can you believe what you read?’ mother asked
lapsing into her Dundee accent. “Pen and paper refuse
nothing.”

“Mr. Cameron believes it,” Will said. “I was in there
the other night with the boys, and he read us about a
buffalo hunt that was great. Thousands of buffaloes on
a plain a hundred miles wide, and not a tree or a stone.”

Will knew he had quieted every doubt, in mother’s
mind, for Mr. Cameron was the Presbyterian minister in
Chatsworth and had recently come from Scotland.
“And there are letters in the Toronto Globe, written by
aman called White, saying there’s room for millions of
people in the North West ....and you know what George
McDougall said.”

“But the cold is terrible in the North West,’? mother
said. “I remember the geography we had in our school at
home said, that the haymakers were often frozen in their
tents, and the country should be left to the Indians.”

“There’s plenty room for the Indians, too,” said Will.
“We've no idea of the size of the North West. ... Mr.

30 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Cameron says the Rebellion of 1870 did one good thing,
it brought eastern men out there, and let them see the
country with their own eyes. They saw it, and saw its
good soil, and now there is a real movement to take up
land. I'd like to be going, I certainly want better soil
than we have here.”

Thomas White’s letters in the Montreal Gazette and
Toronto Globe were handed about and read, and dis-
cussed at Breeze’s store and in the tavern. The
majority of the farmers were skeptical. No country
could be as good as this! It was a scheme of the land
agents to get honest men’s money! Men who had the
best farms in the community spoke this way, but men,
particularly young men, who worked on stony farms
listened eagerly. \Chilblains and stone bruises made their
minds receptive.

In the winter of 1878, our neighborhood had a visitor.
Young Michael Lowery, who had been gone two years,
came home. He had gone to Manitoulin Island first, and
then drifted west to the Red River country, where he had
fallen in with freighters, earned good money with them,
and with it had outfitted for farming, and settled on a
piece of land in south western Manitoba, where the rail-
way was already surveyed.

Young Michael had really come back to be married,
but that purpose was carefully concealed for family
reasons. There was still some doubt that he would be
able to get his girl away from her aunt, who was a
masterful woman, and knowing her niece’s ability as a
housekeeper, did not propose to lose her withoutra
struggle.

He was a handsome young giant and wore a shag-
anappi coat, heavily beaded and fringed on the seams with
doe skins, a red scarf and toque; and he had with him a
box of moccasins and gloves made by the Indians. He
had many tales to tell of good hunting, big game, narrow

ECHOES FROM THE WEST 31

escapes, friendly Indians, apd above all in fascination for
the dwellers along the Garifraxa, hundreds of acres of
land, without a stone, or a bush, waiting to be taken.
There were strawberries so plentiful and luscious, that
his oxen’s feet were red with them as he ploughed this
willing sod, young Michael said; and there were wild
plums and cranberries, spilling on the ground, with no
one to pick them.

Young Michael must have told his story well, for the
quiet waters of our neighborhood were stirred to their
depths, and discussions raged in every farm house. As
a rule the older people scoffed at the idea that any place
could be as free from “drawbacks,” as Michael claimed
for the North West. The Hemstock family shook its
composite head and said, “green fields are far away.
What about orchards in the North West? Can apple
trees live in that frosty country?” The Hemstocks had
a whole acre in fruit trees and a purple grape vine that
covered a stone fence. The Charltons on the next farm
had had a relative in Minnesota during the trouble
with the Sioux and nothing would move them from the
security of Grey County.

But the young people kindled to the picture young
Michael painted—they could see the sea of grass and
the friendly skies above it, and they could feel the in-
toxication of being the first to plant the seed in that
mellow black Joam, enriched by a million years of rain
and sun.

My brother Will caught the fever and when his chores
were done, cleared out every evening across the fields to
Robert Lowery’s where young Michael was staying, and
did not come in till all hours, maybe ten o’clock.

Echoes of Michael’s comparisons drifted in through
Will’s conversation. “Out West they do things in a big
way,” Will said. “Fifty acres is the size of a field not
afarm. And there are no coppers, Michael said he hardly
knew what they were when he saw them.”

$2 CLEARING IN THE WEST

“How do they get on without them?” George asked
incredulously.

“They don’t haggle about trifles,” said Will, “a thing
is either five cents or ten cents. If it is less than five
cents they give it to you.”

“That would save a lot of counting of collection,”
mother said, “but it might keep some people from church
too. ... It always makes me feel mean to see people put a
cent on the collection plate; especially them that can
afford more. To see a woman with a nice braided.dolman
put a penny on a plate is about as mean a sight as I
know.”

“This kind of pocket handkerchief-farming makes
people mean, Michael says the people of Grey County
would kill a flea for the hide and tallow,” Will remarked.

Strangely enough, my mother was more impressed
with Red Michael’s story than my father. She questioned
him closely, and unlike some other questioners, listened
when he answered. I think Michael liked talking to her.

“We'll have to go some place, John,” she said one
night to my father. “There’s nothing here for our three
boys. What can we do with one-hundred-and-fifty stony
acres? The boys will be hired men all their lives, or
clerks in a store. That’s not good enough!”

Father was fearful! There were Indians to consider,
not only Indians, but mosquitoes. He had seen on the
Ottawa what mosquitoes could do to horses; and to peo-
ple too. No! It was better to leave well enough alone.
Had any of us ever gone hungry? And now when we
were getting things fixed up pretty well, with the new
root-house; and the cook-house shingled, and the lower
eighty broken up, and the good school now, with a real
teacher, and an inspector coming once a year anyway,
and a fine Sunday school too, and all sorts of ad-
vantages. ...

We all knew mother was agitated as she went around
the house, for she banged doors and set down stove lids

ECHOES FROM THE WEST 33

noisily. And she kept everyone going at top speed. Even
I knew she was in some sort of tribulation of spirit. ...
When everything else was done, the leach had to be
watered; and that was one little chore I could do.

The leach was a smail barrel of ashes, set up on a
trestle, high enough to cover a black iron pan. The barrel
had small auger holes bored in the bottom, and the in-
numerable pails of water poured on the ashes would at
last run through in reluctant black drops, and then the
leach was said to be running.

The lye thus extracted was used for making soap,
and the day the soap was made was a day of high ad-
venture. The operation took place outside in a big black
kettle that was never used for anything else. No ordinary
day would do. It had to be a clear bright day with no
wind, and the moon had to be on the increase or the soap
might not set. Over a blazing fire, made in a hole lined
with stones, the grease and lye were fused in the old black
pot and stirred all the time, from left to right, with a
hickory stick. All persons of six or under were excluded
from the ceremony, but there was nothing to prevent per-
sons of six or under from climbing out of an upstairs
window, reaching the sloping roof of the kitchen, lying
flat on the edge and looking down.

There was a fascination in the fiery boiling of this
billowy mass, threatening every minute to boil over. My
mother, in a sprigged blue print dress, tucked tightly
between her knees and her head rolled in a red handker-
chief stood on the windward side, stirring with a quick
motion. Wooden boxes stood ready to receive the soap
when it was done. No one must speak to her or interrupt
in any way when the boiling was going on, for there was
& moment when the pot must be removed and if that
moment were correctly guessed the soap would harden. |
My mother was the High Priestess of all domestic rites to -.,
me, so of course she knew the exact moment. I had no
doubt she invented soap making, and I was very proud of

34 CLEARING IN THE WEST

her cleverness, and sorry for the little girls whose
mothers couldn’t make soap and so had to use the
“boughten” kind.

And there was a real trick in making soap. Even my
Aunt Ellen had a failure once, and my Aunt Ellen was a
very clever woman, and one of the delights of my child-
hood. Aunt Ellen lived in the village and we often went
to see her. Uncle Abner was a blacksmith, but he only
worked in the afternoons. Uncle Abner had blue black
curly hair, and big blue eyes, and the longest mustache
ever seen. When I sat behind him I could see both ends.
People said Uncle Abner was lazy, and really good for
nothing, but playing the fiddle at dances. But they did
not say that to Aunt Ellen, who adored him. People said
she was too proud to admit that she had made a bad
bargain. Aunt Ellen said people did not understand
Abner. Naturally he liked company, why shouldn’t he?
He was the life of the party wherever he went; and when
he was out late so many evenings, he just had to sleep
in the mornings. But he could do as much in an after-
noon as most men did all day. Uncle Abner made me a
little basket from a walnut shell, and a gold wire brooch
with my initials. My mother did not quite approve of my
Uncle Abner but she qualified her criticism by saying:
“For all that, he has nice way with him.” Uncle Abner
was frequently cited in matrimonial arguments along the
Garafraxa. Indignant husbands, hard-working and
steady, who felt they were being unduly criticized for
some slight misdemeanor, wished they were more “like
Abner Patton and then they might be appreciated by

gum.”

Young Michael had certainly troubled the waters, with
his stories of the far west. All day long, while the work
of the farm went on, at high speed, not much was said,
but at night the rafters in the kitchen rang with words.

Unfortunately I had to go to bed, but Hannah relayed

ECHOES FROM THE WEST 35

them to me, with shrewd editorial comment, and long
before any decision was reached, told me she was sure
we were going. She based this belief on the fiery way
mother was working. There was another quilt on the
way; and the leach was set up again. Arabella Cresine
was coming to sew as soon as she was through with the
Charltons.

We began to be sorry for the young people who had
to stay forever in Grey County.

I wondered what we would do with the dogs. ...
Aunt Ellen might take them; they had two already, but a
dog more or less did not matter. Uncle Abner would like
the brown spaniel, but not old Watch, who had no beauty
or grace, just a stern sense of duty. All day he watched
for hawks and answered the call of the hens. He never
left the yard, never played, never had any fun, never
wagged his tail and nobody liked him but mother, who
said if he were young she wouldn’t take a hundred dollars
for him. Nap, the spaniel was a joyous pup, with silky
brown hair and creamy white trimmings. He could sit up
and beg and bring back sticks, and play ball; would not go
after the cows, or chase a hawk, or do anything useful,
but he was light of heart and had a welcoming bark for
everyone. My father called him “play-boy,” and said it
was too bad that the two dogs could not be combined.

He explained to me one day when I was picking
potatoes for him in the field between our house and the
road. He said old Watch did not need to be so cross and
grim and suspicious, and Nap might easily learn to be
useful without losing one bit of his playful ways. People
were the same. And then he went on and said that was
one reason Christ was sent to earth—to show people that
a Christian might be, indeed must be polite and pleasant,
and full of fun and fond of music, and pretty colors and
yet serious too and earnest. And he told me to think
about this and try to combine the virtues of Watch and
the friendliness of Nap, in my own life.

36 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I asked him then if it were wrong for me to mock the
aunts.

He stopped his work and looked over toward the
house, before he answered; his voice fell, as if he were
afraid the wind might carry it—

“Your mother thinks it is,” he said, “she thinks it
shows disrespect. I do not think so. They are funny,
queer stiff old ladies, set in their ways and right in their
own eyes. It’s no harm for you and me to have a laugh
over them, a laugh is as good as a meal or an hour’s
sleep. But perhaps we had better not offend your mother.
We know that would be wrong, we’ll just keep it to our-
selves and not be hurting anyone’s feelings.”

“What makes mother like that?” I asked after awhile.

“She’s Scotch,” he said, “they’re very serious people,
a little bit stern, but the greatest people in the world for
courage and backbone. The Irish are different; not so
steadfast or reliable, but very pleasant. Irish people have
had so much trouble, they had to sing and dance, and
laugh and fight to keep their hearts from breaking.”

“TY am glad you are Irish,” I said. I stopped picking
and straightened up. It was a lovely autumn day, with
a sky as blue as an enamel plate. From the yard came
the contented sounds of hens cackling and turkeys gob-
bling. White clouds, with gray wrinklings idled over our
heads. The wind lifting the potato stocks made a dry
rustling that subtly spoke of winter, when there would be
long dark days, with frozen window panes and stinging
winds that made it impossible to play outside. But this
day, full of the abundance of harvest was made for joy
and singing, and we went on with the digging and sang
as we worked:

“Shule, shule, shule, agra
Its time can only aise me woe
Since the lad o’ me heart
From me did part.
Schedate, avoureen, schlana.

ESHOES FROM THE WEST
I'll dye me petticoat,
I'll dye it red
And through the world
I'll beg me bread,
I wish in me heart
That I was dead.
Schedate, avoureen, schlana.”

The words were sad, but not the singers.

387

CHAPTER V
THE DECISION

ONE day the whole question of emigration to the far away
Red River was suddenly decided. The vapor of argu-
ment and opinion suddenly lifted and blew away, and
before us stretched a straight hard road, from which
there could be no turning back.

The spring plowing was going on this bright windy
day in May; and because of the high wind and eddying
dust I was playing in the kitchen; I had just come over to
the long table to watch mother kneading her bread, which
squeaked as the air-bubbles broke. All in a moment the
door flew open and Will came in, with a gust of wind.

He must have made a dramatic entry, for I can re-
member that his face was white an: his eyes had turned
strangely black. Mother turned around from the table
and stood without speaking. Will threw his hat on the
floor and every sound in the house suddenly ceased.

“T am done!” he said, and his voice shook with rage.
“TI am quitting right here! I'll never put another plow
into the soil of Grey County, I’ll go west, if I have to
walk!”

Mother went to him and helped him to the sofa.

“You are hurt Willie,” she said anxiously. ‘Did the
plow hit a stone?”

Will nodded, “It knocked my wind out,” he said, “A
hidden stone—there’s no end to them, but I’m done. I’ve
quit!”

There was no argument. Will would go at once and
if he liked it we would all go in a year.

The day Will left I cried bitter tears. I think every
one cried but mother. She said there was no need of
tears, we should be glad we had a brother brave enough

38

THE DECISION 89

to go out west and find land for us, and we would all be
together soon, and there would be plenty to do in the year
getting ready for the big move, and there would be need
of every one, even to the youngest. I knew that meant I
would have to go on watering the leach.

We all walked out to the road with Will and waited
for the stage, which would take him to Owen Sound, and
he would get on the Francis Smith, the boat which
sailed that night. He wore a pale gray shirt, with a blue
tie caught in a gold ring, and had a new grey felt hat and
carried the only valise we owned. I knew he would
conquer the world.

The next night came the storm which beat the Francis
Smith upon the rocks. The gale came suddenly in the
night and wakened me with great flashes of lightning
followed by peals of thunder that shook the world. First
a flash and then a burst of thunder and pelting rain
in one deafening confusion. I turned my face into
the pillow, but could still see the flashes. Then the
rumbles began to come from farther away and the rain
slackened too. Suddenly I thought of the boat and sat up!
Would the storm be on the Lakes? A flash of lightning
showed me mother kneeling by her bedside in her
nightgown, her long dark hair hanging down her
back in two braids; and through the dark I heard her
praying: “Thou, who didst walk the waters on the sea of
Galilee,” she pleaded, “‘walk it again on Lake Superior and
save the Francis Smith; O, still the waves and let the
passengers be saved, even if the vessel is smashed to
pieces on the rocks, stoop, O Saviour, stoop and save.”

I prayed too, but my petition was a simple one. I
made a little tent of my hands before my face and
whispered in the dark; “Dear God, take care of Will—he’s
my biggest brother and he’s going to find good land for
us. He’s a good fellow, and if he should get drowned we
can’t go west. Amen.”

Having thus delivered myself I went to sleep again
and slept till morning. I knew it would be all right. God

40 CLEARING IN THE WEST

would not go back on mother. My father must have felt
the same way, for he slept the night through. At day-
light mother wakened him and they drove into Owen
Sound and found out that all the passengers had been
taken off the ship, and a few days later we got Will’s
letter, telling us about the storm.

After that Will’s letters became the great events of
our lives. He had joined a surveying party and was
lucky to get on it. Now he would see the country and be
able to chose the best land; he wouldn’t forget to have a
running stream on the farm and there would be good
black loam. He was well and happy and letting his
whiskers grow....

He found a place near the Souris River. ... We could
write to Grand Valley now and he would get it some
time. We must not be anxious if we did not hear from
him, and would we give this letter to Annie Stephenson to
read? He had only one stamp. ... He would draw a map
of the township for us....

He was going to camp in the bush with a man called
Macdonald, and cut logs for the house when the cold
weather came. Maybe he would get a chance to send a
letter out, anyway he would be all right in the camp—
there was plenty of firewood and they had a tin stove and
lots of pork and beans, and rabbits were plentiful. He
hoped we could sell the farm. There was plenty of good
land here lying waste. He would came to Winnipeg to
meet usin May....

In May, 1880, we all sailed on the City of Owen Sound.
I remember taking leave of the old home which had been
bought by a man called Crawford. I was dressed in my
best dress, the day we left, for I was going to have my
picture taken in Owen Sound. It was a black and white
farmer’s satin, second mourning for my grandmother
who had died the year before. I had white cotton stock-
ings, knit in a feather pattern, and high laced boots.

The neighbors helped us to draw our stuff into Owen

THE DECISION 41

Sound. Hannah and I rode with Caleb Morgan, Mr.
Conger’s hired man. It was a bleak windy day, with light
clouds rolling, but we were warmly wrapped in a blanket
and sat on the high spring seat with Caleb. He confided
in us as we rattled along that he fully intended to get out
west himself sometime, but what could a man do with his
mother and two sisters to support?

Mother and father rode in our own wagon ahead,
driven by Mr. Crawford, who had bought the horses and
wagon, and was helping us now to get our stuff on the
boat.

We stopped in Chatsworth and went into the ceme-
tery. On Grandmother’s grave mother put a wreath of
paper flowers, in a little box with a glass lid, which
Arabella Cresine had made for her. There was a new
white stone with her name, ‘Margaret Fullerton Mc-
Curdy.” There was a little grave beside grandmother’s
with a white lamb at the head and this was where the
little brother, John Wesley, whom I had never seen, was
laid. I had been there before and knew about this little
fellow, who was the smartest, best child of us all, and
one Sunday he had come home from Sunday school with
his Berean Leaf and said his verse, ‘Let not your heart
be troubled,” and he was dead at noon on Tuesday. I
tried to feel sad when I looked at the little stone. . .
mother cried when she knelt beside the little mound
and said, “We’re not leaving you Johnny, for you’re
safe in heaven and I carry your memory in my heart and
always will....and when the other children all grow up
and leave me, I’ll still have my wee bairn. ... And when
my time comes you will be the angel sent out to meet me,
and you will say your verse to me then... .”

Near Inglis Falls we stopped again to say goodbye to
the McMickens, who kept the tavern there. Mrs. Mc-
Micken was my father’s niece, and Robert her boy,
eighteen years old was sick with consumption. He had
grown too fast. There were great deer’s heads in the
hall, and a cabinet of stuffed birds on the landing of the

42 CLEARING IN THE WEST

stairs. We were all taken in to say goodbye to Robert,
who lay as white as the pillows on his high bed.

In Owen Sound, Hannah, Lizzie and I stayed at Mary
Little’s. Mary had gone from our neighborhood some
years ago and set herself up in dressmaking, and had
done well. She was a thin darting little woman with a
heart-shaped pincushion of red velvet hanging from her
leather belt. Across from her house was a great yellow
house, whose eaves and windows and verandah were all
edged with wooden lace.

At Silver Inlet, we went ashore to see a cousin, who
had the name of being a bad housekeeper. She read
novels, paper-backed novels, day and night and would
neither knit or sew. Novels were a form of poison. I
knew that, but mother spoke well of poor Lucy in spite of
her weakness. She was as good natured a soul as ever
lived, and would be a good woman, if she could only leave
the cursed novels alone. Maybe she had done better in
her new home. Anyway, we would call and see her for
the boat stayed two hours.

We trailed up a long hill, with a narrow sidewalk of
two boards and houses standing one above another. We
found Lucy’s house quite easily. There were no curtains
on the windows and boards in the steps were broken, but
that was not Lucy’s fault, surely Johnny should have
mended the steps, but it seems the novels had got Johnny
too, not that he read them, but Lucy didn’t get the right
sort of meals and Johnny had lost heart, so he couldn’t
be expected to mend the steps. Lucy came to the door in
bedroom slippers and a Mother Hubbard wrapper, and
her hair was in curl papers, though this was late after-
noon. She was very glad to see us, and took us into her
little parlor, where the furniture wore grey linen dusters,
and the pictures were crooked on the wall. But her
house was warm; and from the bare window looking out
on the street, we could see the blue waters of the harbor,
and our big white boat waiting for us. Lucy made a cup
of tea for us and served us biscuits, “boughten biscuits,”

THE DECISION 43

but lovely to the taste. Lucy was very sweet and pleasant,
and told mother she was late with her housecleaning this
spring, but she was going to get right at it as soon as she
finished the book she was reading; such a lovely story
about an orphan who was the real heir to her grand-
father’s millions. But do you think her uncles would let
her have the money ?—they had laid traps for her in every
way, and now they were plotting with the gypsies to steal
her, and her so young and sweet and innocent. Even the
old gypsy woman was better than her own uncles, and
had come by night to see Dolores—that was the orphan, to
tell her not to drink—

Mother interrupted Lucy there just when it was get-
ting interesting, and asked for Johnny and Lucy said
that Johnny was the “same old tupenny bit.”

I liked Lucy. She had a cat too, a big furry one,
black and white, which lay on the top of the side-board
among the newspapers.

We stayed until our boat gave its deep-throated
whistle to warn us that one hour had gone, and then
mother hurried us out. I wanted to find out about
Dolores, the orphan, and what it was she mustn’t drink,
but I never knew.

The boat carried us as far as Duluth and again we
climbed a hill—this time to find a store, for we had to
carry our own food on the train. I had ten cents of my
own too, which was causing me some anxiety. I bought
maple sugar with it, and rued my bargain immediately,
for there were many other things I would have preferred,
but maple sugar was the first thing offered to me, and I
did not wish to hurt the clerk’s feelings.

Hannah was indignant with me for letting my money
Zo so easily. “We have better maple sugar than that
with us,” she said, “maple sugar is no treat, anyway,
when we can make it ourselves.”

“TI like this,” I said, “look at the scallops around the
edge, and I think it will have a different taste from ours!”

“You haven’t much sense,’”’ Hannah said, and I knew

44 CLEARING IN THE WEST

it was true. But I stuck to my bargain and pretended I
was satisfied, remembering Aunt Ellen.

The train journey from Duluth to St. Boniface passed
like a flash. If there were pullmans on this train, they
were not used by us. We slept very comfortably on the
seats, for we had pillows and blankets. Our only trouble
was that the car was crowded, but I slept very well for
a man across the aisle offered to take me, for he was alone
in the seat, and made a nice bed for me on his buffalo
coat. Mother was afraid he might steal me and so did
not close an eye all night, but no such thought kept me
from my slumber. I asked him to please waken me when
we crossed the Mississippi, and I told him boastfully, I
fear, that I could spell ‘Mississippi,’ and proceeded to
do so, and having gone thus far in making a contact with
the great waterway, it was only natural that I should
want to see it. He promised to waken me, if he could stay
awake himself. He said we would cross the river in day-
light, just about daybreak, but he would find out for sure.

I was pretty drowsy when he gently stirred and called
me, and I knew it would be a chance of a life-time. He
told me we would be on the bridge in a minute. It was in
the dull gray of a misty spring morning; discolored snow
lined the yellow clay banks, and the great current of
water billowed and threshed and churned its way under
us, as the train crawled slowly over the bridge. The air
was full of its clamoring roar as my friend held me up
so I could see through the clear glass in the top half of
the window, and I flattened my nose on it, in my eager-
ness to see all I could of the turmoil below me.

“I know what it is like,” I said, when the train had
passed the last trestle, and began to pick up speed on the
level track, and I was crawling back into the fur coat.

He expressed his readiness to hear.

“Soft soap,” I said, “when it is just ready to boil over
and folding up from the bottom.”

“T have never seen soft soap,” he said, “where did you
see it?”

THE DECISION 45

I wanted to tell him about the leach with the black pan
under it, but my eyes were heavy with sleep, so I just
waved my hand across the aisle. If he wanted inform-
ation, there was the original soap maker. She could tell
him the story of soap from the beginning.

CHAPTER VI
WE ARRIVE

WE arrived in St. Boniface at night, a close hot May
night with no moon. There seemed to be no place to stay,
so we crossed the river in a row-boat. Timoleon Tait’s
ferry did not start to run until later in the season. The
seven of us, with our hand baggage were packed in the
the boat, and I remember trailing my hand in the cold
water, which seemed very nearly up to the edge of the
boat. We found a hotel that would take us in and let us
spread our bedding on the floor, every bed being occupied,
and here, sleepy and tired we laid down. But when
daylight came, and my mother saw what sort of a place
we were in we made a hurried exit. She must have been
greatly shaken at the sight, for she imparted to each of us
a great desire to get out. I think it was probably her
first sight of old and unashamed dirt. The bill was fifteen
dollars.

Our next place of sojourn was a delightful one—a tent
on the river bank, where all day we could see the activities
of both the Red and Assiniboine, for our camping ground
was at the junction of these two rivers. Many other
settlers were camped there, and we were welcomed by the
older residents and every assistance was given to us.
Before three days had gone by we had a floored tent,
with a stove, home-made table, a clothesline and bunks
around the sides of the tent, and knew all the other
families. My mother set to work to wash the bedding,
bit by bit, for the memory of that one night in the
Browse Hotel had to be purged away by soap and water
and the high bright sunshine of the river bank.

We were not overlooked by the purveyors of Winni-
peg. A butcher’s cart came down to us twice a week with

46

WE ARRIVE 47

beefsteak at seventy-five cents a pound, and an enter-
prising dairyman led two cows through the encampment
and sold milk at thirty cents a quart, cafeteria style.
Land agents with pockets bulging with documents
swarmed about us.

Our great excitement was the river boats passing on
both rivers; some side-wheelers and some with the
propeller behind, great red and white boats churning the
muddy water of the river into creamy foam. The land-
ings were made by throwing out a cable, when the boat
had come as near to the shore as the water allowed and
letting off the deckhands called, “Roosters,” who tugged
at the cables and drew the boat to shore. The landings
were accomplished in torrents of profanity, directed
toward the Roosters who worked away patiently and
without resentment; one of our tent-neighbors said the
captains seemed to be even-tempered men, always in a
rage.

We were three days in the tent when Will came with
our cousin John Clarke, a young man about Will’s age,
who looked like him too, and when these two sunburned
young fellows in their high boots, with whiskers on their
faces came in, and hailed us as their own and we knew
that we were all together again, our happiness was com-
plete. Now let the hurricane roar, we were here! We
had reached the Red River and the world was ours!

I remember lying in bed in the tent trying to keep
awake when Will was telling about the time he had spent
at the Junction of the Assiniboine and Souris, that ter-
rible winter of ’79-’80 when the frost split the trees wide
open, and they cracked like pistol shots, and the northern
lights pink and gold, and green, waved and fluttered in
the sky like curtains hung on a clothes line on a windy
day. The stove was kept red-hot but even so his back
was freezing while his face burned. And the wolves
circled and howled, and snapped their hungry jaws out-
side the tent, some so near to him he never ceased to
be frightened they would get an ear or a toe, and the two

48 CLEARING IN THE WEST

ponies died, although they had made a shelter of logs
for them, and covered it with spruce boughs, but they
had breathed the frost into their lungs. ... After that no
one spoke for so long, I fell asleep.

But most of all we wanted to hear of the land he had
taken for us. A half section for himself and one for
father, and a quarter for George, all together. Ours
was section 20, township 7, range 16, and Will drew a
diagram to show us how the sections were laid out, draw-
ing in the running stream that cut through our farm,
and circled to make a perfect building site.

Oxen had to be bought now, and two wagons and some
place had to be found for us to live. Will’s plan was
for the family to stay in Winnipeg while he and father
and George would take part of the furniture and drive
the hundred-and-eighty miles, build a house with the
logs he and Macdonald had cut down and dressed, and
then come back for us in September, before the cold
weather came.

Mother wanted to keep us all together and go on. We
could live in the tent while the house was being built, but
Will was afraid of the mosquitoes, lack of good water
and the general discouragement which might fall upon
us. So a house was found, five miles from Winnipeg at
Saint James. It was a big old house with a smoking
chimney and a tragic history. Its owner had been shot
through one of the windows and the mystery had never
been cleared up. The great attraction for us was the
fine garden, already ploughed and ready for planting,
and this was set with seeds before the men left for their
long journey.

Beside us was Sir Donald A. Smith’s house, “Silver
Heights,” a beautiful manor house, surrounded by lawns
and flowers and white trellised arbors, with long gabled
stables at the back of the grounds. Often in the evening
many carriages turned in at the gates, phaetons with wide
fenders, covered carriages with lamps on the dash-boards

WE ARRIVE 49

carrying brilliantly dressed people, to dance in the great
ballroom on the second floor, and on these nights, Hannah
and I, who went to bed early would hang half-way out
of our room window, listening to the ribbony notes of
the violins playing the Blue Danube Waltz and watching
the swaying figures of the dancers. We named them and
wove romances around them giving them as happy
destinies as we thought they deserved. They drew better
fortunes from us on the nights they forgot to draw the
blue velvet handings, thus preserving for us a good view
of the enchanted ballroom. Sometimes we fancied that
proposals of marriage transpired before our eyes in the
alcove, and we rehearsed the scene with words of our own
making. ‘“Lorelie—may I call you Lorelie? Your love-
liness has haunted me since first you crossed my path—
and not one peaceful hour have I known since then, so
now I must, and will know my fate. Is there a spark of
hope that you might grow to love a rough warrior? Nay
do not shrink!”

To which I, as Lorelie, made reply with downcast
eyes and blushes mantling my snowy brow, “How do I
know—I am so young—so ignorant of the world—Sir
Hector, I have so lately left my lessons.”

Then we had another scene where Lorelie wept and
confessed she loved another, one of humble birth, and Sir
Hector promised to seek out the handsome herd boy and
make him his heir; so her father’s objections would be
removed. Whereupon Lorelie fell at his feet and em-
braced his knees and cried until Sir Hector, although a
little stiff in the back, stooped and lifted her and wiped
her tears with his own bandana handkerchief, drawn
from the tail of his coat with a crack like a whip-lash.
Hannah had invented this scene, to show off her trick of
snapping a handkerchief.

Our first intimation of the evil character of the house
was brought in by Jack, who said the boys he played with

50 CLEARING IN THE WEST

wouldn’t come in for there was a curse on the house, and
a ghost in the attic that moaned in the night.

Mother did not seem to be worried over either the
curse or the ghost. Hannah and I were greatly thrilled
to be living in a house that had a ghost—that was some-
thing surely and we were not afraid, not at the moment,
for night was a long way off and the sun was shining.
Anyway, mother said a person who had a good conscience
need not be afraid of ghosts, even if there were ghosts,
which she did not believe.

But one night there came a storm. The wind came
down on us, with sudden fury, bending the poplar trees
across the windows, and shaking every loose window in
our house. We used only two rooms downstairs and two
upstairs, for, having sent all the furniture we could do
without, on the wagons, we were managing with the scant
necessities.

We were all downstairs when the gale struck, and at
first we watched the tossing trees and the rolling clouds
from the front windows. Suddenly the whole house burst
into groans, rolling higher and higher and then dying into
agonized whispers. We turned from the window in a
panic of fear. Mother stood up and listened with her
brows drawn down and every sense alert. Then she shook
her head and went out into the hall. The sounds certain-
ly were coming from upstairs. We were sure it was the
ghost, or a collection of ghosts, but not a word was spoken
until mother announced her intention of finding out. We
formed a procession, Jack walking ahead carrying the
lamp. Mother followed with an ax, Lizzie, Hannah and
I fell in, I did not want to go, but it would be worse to
stay behind.

The moans did not belong to the first floor but came
from the attic, rising and falling with every gust. A
blaze of lightning blotted out the yellow lamp light, leav-
ing us almost blinded. There was a door to the attic,
always locked, but mother had all the keys with her. She

WE ARRIVE 51

found the key, unlocked the door and opened it. A rush
of wind put out the light.

“TI think I know what the trouble is,’ she said,
“There’s no ghost.”

“T’]1 go down and get the matches,” Jack volunteered,
and I thought it was very brave of him. But mother did
not need a light.

“Never mind, I’ll go up and close the windows, the
lightning will show the way. Don’t be afraid, it’s
nothing!”

We stayed below and heard her steps on the bare floor.
There were continuous flashes of lightning. In a few
minutes we heard her coming and her voice had a note of
victory. “Nothing at all,” she said, “just bottles in the
windows with their necks turned out, and when the wind
blew it roared in and out. I let the windows down, so
we'll hear no more groans.”

We went down the stairs and back to the kitchen,
where a cheerful fire burned in the stove and the lamp-
light never looked more welcome. “I think I'll have a cup
of tea, and you may have hot milk,” mother said, “and
we'll sit down a while and read our book. It’s not late
yet and we don’t feel like sleeping.”

The storm went on but the sounds in the house had
settled down to what night sounds should be when the
rain pours down, and the wind is riding the trees. And
we had a fine long evening following the fortunes of the
“Scottish Chiefs.”

Before the men of the family had left for the west, a
farm for sale was offered to us, Louis Pruden’s farm on
the river bank—four chains wide, as all the farms were,
and four miles long, laid out in this way to provide river
frontage for everyone and to make it possible for the
houses to be close together. The price was sixteen-
hundred dollars, which was about all we had after the
oxen, waggons and supplies were bought. We could buy
it on easy terms and Will saw possibilities in the venture.

52 CLEARING IN THE WEST

“We could sell it in a year and double our money,”
Will said.

“This land will be sold for town lots in ten years,”
father said, who was favorable to the project. “Winnipeg
will be one of the great cities of Canada and nothing can
prevent it.”

» But mother stood firm. “Let us go on,” she said.

/“Let us go to an all-white settlement. There are too many

jet black eyes and high cheek bones here. I like them

very well when they belong to the neighbors’ children,

; but I would not like them in my grand-children. We

| came here, John, for the children’s sake, not ours, and
! we'll do our best for them every way.”

I couldn’t see why she objected. Indian Tommy was
the nicest boy we played with, and the McMullen children
were all right too. Indian Tommy’s mother worked in the
kitchen of Silver Heights, so quite often he came over
and played with us. He could whistle like a meadow lark
and climb any tree on the place, and after he lost his two
front teeth, he could spit right through a knot-hole in the
fence.

Indian Tommy’s mother did not like another woman,
called Mrs. Baggs, because Mrs. Baggs said Indian
Tommy’s mother had never been drunk in her life and she
had, roaring drunk once in Winnipeg. This started the
quarrel, and when they fought on the river bank, Tommy
took me over to see it, and all would have been well if I
had not brought home the news, but, unfortunately, I did.
Naturally I was glad to see my friend’s mother win and
chase her enemy, almost into the river. Something told
me, though, as I went on with my story that I was not
“getting my audience’. From then on, I was not allowed
to go out of our own grounds unless Hannah or Lizzie
were with me.

But there was good fun in playing inside, when
Hannah would play with me. We climbed the poplar trees
which were just the right size for a lovely game that
Hannah invented. We had two trees that were near

WE ARRIVE 53

enough to strike when we got them teetering and then
the game was to see who could first knock the other one
down. It was a lovely game and its name was, “Biting
the Dust.”

Mother and Jack attended to the garden and it re-
sponded with a prodigality of growth which must have
warmed their hearts. Rich black soil for a seed bed,
plenty of rain and warm sunshine made the plants grow
with great vigor, and I believe this kept mother’s spirits
high that summer more than anything else, for she must
have had her times of loneliness. The mosquitoes were
like all the plagues of the Old Testament but no matter,
the hoeing and weeding went on, for these rows of car-
rots, beets, onions and potatoes would all be needed in
the long winter ahead.

CHAPTER VII
ON THE TRAIL

WHEN the first of September came, we began to watch the
Portage road. Our men might come any day now. Mother
had a pound cake made and set away in a crock, and the
bread supply was not allowed to fall below three loaves
and the stove got blackened every day.

One Saturday evening, as the sun was going down in
a wine red mist, I saw two ox-wagons come over the rise
in the Portage road, beyond the McMullen farm. I was
sure it was our wagons, but I had been sure so many times
before and utterly disappointed when the wagons went
past, that I watched and said nothing. I was the only one
on guard at the moment, and I hoped every one would
stay where they were so I could have the “scoop.” I
wanted to run down to the road, but I had done that
before and there was no luck in it. So I turned my head
away and counted fifty before I looked. They were still
coming! I counted another fifty and with masterly self
control, refrained from sound or motion even though I
could see a red ox, with a red and white ox, a red ox with
a black and white ox. It must be them! I had to stuff
my sun-bonnet into my mouth to keep from raising the
glad shout. At last the first wagon turned in—and I lifted
the alarm, which brought the other members of the family
flying. They thought I had been stung by a bee Jack said
afterwards, and then, to lift forever the bad name which
was sometimes urged against me that I never did any-
thing without being told, I dashed out into the back-
yard to pick up chips for the fire, but in the general
excitement my good deed was not even noticed.

Father and Will had come, leaving George behind to
look after the place... .

64

ON THE TRAIL 55

However the evening had one bright aspect. There
was so much talk, I sat up unobserved until ten, by mak-
ing myself small, and quiet and I heard that we must be
on our way in a week, and that father said he was glad
we had not come with them in the spring, for between the
smoke of the smudges and the mosquito bites there wasn’t
much to choose, and that we were going to get a pony
and cart for it would save the oxen, and be a quicker
way of getting around, when we got home.

There were trips into Winnipeg, to buy supplies and
I got a pair of stout shoes with copper toes, so big I had
to pad my feet below and around with newspaper. I
would grow into them!

The Sunday before we left we all went to church,
walking the mile to the little English church of which
Mr. Pinkham was the rector. We had attended there all
summer and Mr. Pinkham had come to see us. We said
goodbye to the friends we had made: Mr. and Mrs. Arm-
strong, Mr. and Mrs. Buckley and the Tait family—Mr.
and Mrs. Robert Tait, Herbie, Ellen and Addie. Addie
was a little older than I, a tall girl with reddish hair,
who always had money and seemed to me like a princess
in disguise. I think she bought candy every day at the
store and in the mixture, when hard candies with a centre
like flour paste appeared she threw them away. Ah me!
I would have been glad of them, but of course, I couldn’t
take Addie’s “leavings,” so I heaped scorn on them too,
but it was hard to forget them, in the candyless years
that followed.

We left on Monday morning, early, with the poplar
leaves stirring in the light of the rising sun. It was a
glorious morning, with a smell all its own, dead leaves,
ripening grain, coffee and bacon, new boots and some-
thing else, maybe just adventure, the magic of the un-
known.

The garden from which every last vegetable had been
taken lay ruffled and tossed like an unmade bed. We
were all ready to start when father declared the garden

56 CLEARING IN THE WEST

would have to be levelled and raked. There was some
dissension about this, but it was done.

“Sure, and it has served us well,’ he said, as he raked
the stalks into a windrow, “and it is only common civility
to leave it smooth and in order for the people who come
after us....I’d rather cheat a person any day, than cheat
the land.”

We had two wagonloads of ‘Settlers’ Effects,”—
which was a broad term that included anything
from a plow to a paper of pins. The little oxen,
Jake and Brin, went first, for theirs was the lighter load
of the two. In their wagon, wrapped in canvas and
tarpaulins, were the things that would not be needed on
the journey, flour, bacon, dried vegetables, extra bedding,
chairs, tables, boxes of clothing. In the covered wagon,
which the big oxen drew were the necessities for the days
of travel, bedding, dry wood, frying pans, pots, clothing,
ox harness, whiffletrees, a neckyoke, tools, spades for dig-
ging out mud holes, an ax, ropes and chains, and one bed
made up and ready “in case of sickness.”

Never had I experienced as great a moment as came
to me, when the oxen’s heads were turned west on
Portage Avenue and the long trail received us unto itself.
I felt that life was leading me by the hand and I followed
on light feet. We would travel with the sun, until we
came to that flower starred prairie where no stone would
impede the plow; where strawberries would redden the
oxen’s fetlocks; where eight-hundred acres of rich black
soil was waiting for us, and a running stream would stir
the cat-tails in the current and I would have a little boat
on it, with white sails and on hot days I could wade in its
cool waters, and there would be shady pools and big
trees, where I could build a seat and go there and read,
when I learned to read, and it would be far enough away
from the house, I could not hear any one calling me, and
it would be almost the same as having a room of my
own....
We walked as much as we could, riding only when we

ON THE TRAIL 57

got tired. I believe my mother walked all the way, for
she liked to have her eye on the whole procession and she
could only do this from the rear.

It was hot when the sun climbed higher in the sky,
but there came heavy banks of clouds that gave us periods
of shade and the faithful oxen plodded on, at their own
unhurried pace. Wild geese passed into the south to
remind us that winter was on our heels, but nothing
could dim the radiance of that day of high adventure.

White-washed, Red-river frame houses, set in wide
farm yards, well back from the road, stacks of hay and
fields of ripe grain with men cutting it down with reapers,
and in some fields with sickles and cradles—then long
stretches of meadows, growing brown with autumn and
then more houses. Over all the odor of wild sage,
and golden rod, that grew beside the road, and in the air
flights of crows and black-birds visiting the scattered
grain fields, and sitting on wire fences, like strings of jet
beads.

I wondered how these people could be content to stay
on their little farms when there was better land ahead.
Perhaps they did not know. Will had said their land was
too heavy with gumbo and alkali to ever make easy farm-
ing, but they liked living close together with the river at
their front door; and had their little circles of friends,
and simple pleasures.

Part of the glow I felt in beginning this journey,
came from the sense I had that we were well dressed for
the occasion. We had dark print dresses and straw hats,
lined with the same print as our dresses and banded with
a fold of it, dark gray ribbed woolen stockings, hand knit,
and good stout boots. Then we had olive green coats,
made of homespun, mother’s own weaving, with smoked
pearl buttons. I remember these coats well, as well I may,
for when I grew out of mine I stepped into Hannah’s and
when it proved inadequate, I got Lizzie’s, so that olive
green homespun with pearl buttons was my portion in

58 CLEARING IN THE WEST

coats until I was fifteen years old. My Aunt Ellen had
made them and they were good-looking coats.

The bad roads began at Baie St. Paul, a great swampy
place, dreaded by all prairie travellers. We met there, a
tragic family who had turned back, discouraged and
beaten. It was the wife who had broken down. She
wore a black silk dress and lace shawl and a pair of
fancy shoes, all caked with mud. She would have been
a pretty woman if she would only stop crying. She hated
the country, she sobbed, it was only fit for Indians and
squaws and should never have been taken from them.
Her two little girls were crying too. They had broken
their garters and their legs were a mass of mosquito
bites.

Mother was very sorry for their distress and tried to
calm the weeping woman.

“You’re not dressed right for a journey like this,” she
began. “No one can be happy going through mud in a fine
silk dress and thin kid shoes.”

“But these are the oldest things I have,” she pro-
tested tearfully, “and I don’t care if they do get spoiled.”

“But your shoes are not comfortable,” mother said,
“and they are no protection to your feet, and you should
have made yourself some print or gingham dresses.”

“But I can’t! I never made a dress in my life, mother
always did my sewing,’’—and from her eyes came another
freshet. “I want to go back to her; she never wanted me
to come, but I thought it would be fun, and Willard was
so crazy to get land of his own, but he can get his job
back in the store.”

Mother’s zeal began to flag, “Take her back,” she said
to Willard, “she’s not the type that makes a pioneer.”

Willard nodded his head grimly, “I see that,’’—he
said.

Mother invited them to say and eat with us, for we
were stopped for the noon meal and while she was mak-
ing a bannock in the mouth of a flour sack, Will fried the
bacon and made coffee; and Lizzie put Balm of Gilhead

ON THE TRAIL 59
salve on the little girls’ mosquito bitten legs and mended
their garters.

“Poor Willard,” mother said, as we saw them drifting
down the backward trail. “He'll go on selling papers of
pins and yards of tarleton, but all his life he’ll dream
of the yellow wheat fields that might have been his and
heart will wither with longing. But he made the mistake
many good men have made—he married a painted doll, <
instead of a woman.’

“She’s a pretty little thing too,’’ my father said, look-
ing after the wagon receding in the distance—‘‘did you
ever see a neater ankle?”

At High Bluff we bought a pony and cart, a Red-
river cart that had not a nail in it, and whose wooden
axle had never known the soothing touch of axle-grease.
It rumbled and mourned, and creaked, and whined, as it
turned protestingly. We bought the pony from a Metho-
dist minister there, the Reverend Mr. Bray.

Ten miles was a good day’s travelling. One day we
made only one mile.

At Poplar Point we camped beside the home of Chats-
worth people, who had left our neighborhood years before.
Mother had written to Mrs. Lance, but no reply had come,
but Margaret Lance was the sort of woman who would
not write and mother was not offended. Margaret Lane
she was before her marriage and the belle of the country
side, who could have married any man she wanted; but
mother said, “you can go through the woods and go
through the woods and pick up a crooked stick at last.”
So when Johnny Lance came back from the North West,
black as an Indian, and his hair hanging down to his
shoulder, bragging that he had come to pick out a wife
to take back with him, Margaret Lane, (engaged to
be married to Billy Spicer, who owned the farm next to
her father’s), spoke right up and said she would go.
Everyone though it was a joke, but in a week they were
married and away—and word drifted back that Margaret

60 CLEARING IN THE WEST

said it was the best day’s work she had ever done for
herself,

We knew they were now living at Poplar Point, so we
would go to see them when we were so near.

They lived half a mile from the trail, in a long log
house on the bank of a creek. We stopped our wagons on
the other side of the creek which was running swiftly
under the rough bridge and waited there on the bank
opposite their house, while mother and father went across
the bridge and up the bank to the house, attended by
three barking dogs.

When Mrs. Lance came out of the kitchen door, there
was a flurry of wings in the farm yard and hens and ducks
raced toward her. Watching from the wagons we saw
the meeting, though we could hear nothing above the
uproar. <A few black haired children came out of the
house, the eldest boy vainly trying to quiet the dogs.
There was a large duck pond on the side of the creek
next the house, where a fiock of ducks were feeding, but
they, hearing the commotion, climbed out of the water
and waddled up in a body to find out what it was all about,
making raucous comments as they went.

We were taken into the house and there we saw that
although Mrs. Lance had not written she was expecting
us. The kitchen table held a fresh baking of bread, and
after the greetings were over, the eldest boy was sent out
to catch and kill two chickens.

I remember the pattern of their farm buildings. The
house was on one side of the creek; and the hen house and
stables on the other. When we asked why they had built
them this way, Mrs. Lance said she thought it best to keep
the animals across the creek by themselves and while she
said it, a hen and chickens walked in the door of the
kitchen. “We keep her in the woodshed,’” Mrs. Lance
said, “she’s late with her chickens; this is her second
flock and I’m trying to build them up before winter.
It’s just time for her boiled wheat and she knows it.”

ON THE TRAIL 61

The hen cackled and stormed, sounding a hawk-
alarm when she saw us.

Mrs. Lance apologized. ‘She doesn’t like strangers,”
she said, “but don’t mind her, she is really a very friendly
hen when she gets to know you.”

On the top of the high oven a tin milk pan lined with
hay contained three young ducks that had been drenched
with rain, Mrs. Lance said, and had nearly died, but if
she could just get them feathered out before the cold
weather, they would be all right.

“Don’t you find it a long way over to the stables,
down one hill and up another, with the creek to cross?”
mother asked, ‘how do you manage in the spring when
the water is high?”

“Oh! Johnny has a raft and it never lasts very long,
maybe a week—he likes it—” she said, “Johnny does like
a bit of excitement, and the boys are the same. He’s so
fond of animals—and he likes them around him. He’d
have the house full of them, if I would let him. ... I
don’t believe we’ll be long here, there’s people coming to
settle near us and he doesn’t like to be crowded.”

We made our camp across the creek and stayed that
day and night. Mrs. Lance roasted chickens, boiled
potatoes and filled our food boxes to overflowing, when
we left.

Johnny himself arrived home in the afternoon, with
a bag of wild fowl—he had been away shooting on the
marsh, and gave us a riotous welcome. Why couldn’t we
stay a week, and go shooting prairie chickens on the
plains? They were as thick as you ever saw black birds
in the oat fields in Ontario, and so tame, it was a crime to
shoot them.

We could not stay. The weather might break any day
and we were only half way on our journey.

“Well, the North West is the place to live,” Johnny
said, as he drove the hen and chickens out and shut the
door. “The Garafraxa would choke me now, if I went
back. Aman needs freedom! That’s what drove me out,

62 CLEARING IN THE WEST

_«and will drive me out again. It’s different with women!
They never had freedom and so never miss it. Ill have
to sell this place pretty soon and move on. There’s been
two or three land lookers around this summer; wouldn't
you like to buy this place John and settle down, and we’ll
go on to the Souris? It’s about time for us to move
isn’t it Maggie?”

She shook her head.

“The trouble with me is, I won’t take dictation from
anyone,’ Johnny said. “Over here two miles away
they’re startin’ a school. That will mean taxes and what
do we need a school for?’

“What about your children, don’t you want them to go
to school?” mother asked indignantly.

Johnny was pressing tobacco into a black pipe, with
his broad thumb.

“My boys can get all the education they need from
me,” he said. “And what good is it for girls? Makes
them want to read books, when they should be patchin’
quilts; Maggie here, would be a happier woman if she
couldn’t read at all.”

Mother untied her apron before she replied to this.

“The only thing we live for is our children,” she
said in her Scotch voice, “and if we fail them, we have
failed altogether. Every child has a right to an edu-
cation and if you do not get that for them, you have
cheated them.”

“You’re movin’ the wrong way,” he said, “if its edu-
cation you’re after. There will be no schools out west
where you’re headin’, for years. It will be like the bush
in Grey County forty years ago when my folks went in.
The schools came too late for me, and when they came, I
was too big to go, but I don’t know as I mind. I’ve done
all right. One generation gets missed out in every new
settlement, and you'll find that out too. The thing is not
to get too much education in the next. It makes too wide
a gap. I don’t want my kids to get feeling they know
more than I do; not that it would hurt me, but it wouldn’t

ON THE TRAIL 63

be good for the kids. You women are all the same—all
for learnin’, but I want my boys to stay with me, and this
is one way to keep them. Ignorance holds families
together.”

“You don’t mean it Johnny!” mother said at last.
“No one could be as selfish as this, or as foolish”....

“I do mean it! Look what education does for people!
A man in the Portage forged a cheque and is in jail for
it, a good fellow too, would he have done that if he had
never learned to write? He had an idea he was smart—
knew a little more than the rest of us. And if you do read
a newspaper—what do you get? Murders, horse thiev-
ing, devilment of one kind or another. What good does
her readin’ do Maggie, here? Upsets her that’s all. Gets
her feeling too big for her boots.”

That was too much for mother to stand. “Johnny
Lance!” she said, “you married the prettiest girl and the
best liked girl in Sullivan county. She jilted a good man
to marry you—and she has roughed it with you, in this
new country, and put up with you, done without things,
and met all sorts of hardships and you would begrudge
her the little bit of pleasure she gets from reading a book
when her day’s work is done and you want to move on
again, thinking always of your own wishes, your own
pleasure, and not of your family. I wonder at you,
Johnny !”

“You got me wrong, Mrs. Mooney,” he defended, good
naturedly, “I don’t begrudge it to her, if it did her any
good, but I claim it don’t. She reads in a paper that a
man stole horses in Winnipeg and got away, and she’s
runnin’ out all the time countin’ ours. Or she reads a
story about a man that left his wife and took up with
a younger woman, one with yalla hair and I see her eyin’
me, and I know she’s afraid she might lose me. That’s
what I mean. My claim is it’s a mistake to know more
than you need to know; and that’s why I like animals so
well. They ask no questions, tell nothing, have no am-

64 CLEARING IN THE WEST

bitions or regrets, or complaints, and take things as they
come.”

Mrs. Lance was making motions behind his head,
and no more was said.

Before we left, Mrs. Lance defended her husband’s
wild talk.

“Johnny just talks to hear himself, but he doesn’t
mean it. He feels bitter about not ever being to school
and covers it up pretending he does not care. He’s a
good man to me, Lettie. J don’t regret giving Billy
Spicer the go-by. I’d have had an easier life, maybe, a
good house and near town, but Johnny suits me, for all
he’s rough in his ways and he likes to talk big. He’s a
child in some ways, would rather be scolded than not
noticed at all. He just loved having you pitch into him.
I couldn’t let you go thinking that Johnny is mean, for
he isn’t. He voted for the school and wants the boys to
get an education as much as I do. I think most men take
a little knowing, Lettie.”

They promised to come to see us some summer, when
the roads were better. Distances were long in the early
eighties and friendships languished in the long silences,

The weather broke the day we left the Lances and
the real trouble of the journey began. Fortunately there
were many travellers on the road and the mud-holes were
the drag nets which brought them all together. Some-
times it took three yokes of oxen to draw a wagon out
of a bad spot and even then the long grass beside the road
had to be cut and thrown into the slippery, gummy mud
to give the oxen a foot-hold.

The men wore long boots of leather and overalls of
brown or blue duck, but I do not remember seeing any
rubber boots. If the holes were not deep, Hannah and I
were left in the wagon for our small weight would not
make much difference. But it was like a nightmare to
see the oxen go down, down into the mud, sprawling
helplessly in its treacherous depths. But they did not get

ON THE TRAIL 65

excited as horses would have and they did their best,
without urging. In the worst part of the road we were
fortunate to have Lord Elphinstone and his traders on the
way to Fort Edmonton, and they gave assistance to all
the wagons on the road. The traders who had been
travelling the trail for years, were always serene and
cheerful and said the road was not as bad as it used to
be, and that no wagon had been actually lost in the mud
for quite awhile.

We stopped at another friend’s house, and made our
camp in their yard. They were Chatsworth people too,
who had come the year before. They had a little girl
just my age, named Abigail, a pallid child with faded
hair, who seemed browbeaten and sad. She sat stonily
silent in a little rocking chair hardly moving, and yet her
mother and the older members of the family, often re-
proved her. “Abigail behave!” is all I can remember of
any of the conversation. Hannah and I played the
“Abigail behave,” game many times, adding interesting
variations. I liked to be Abigail, and added to her air of
sadness, by letting my hair fall over my eyes and looking
cross-eyed while Hannah shouted at me to “behave.”
Our nice game fell under the ban at last for “mocking is
catching,” and “people who make faces will find they can-
not change back, if the wind changes.”

I had a nightmare one night on the trail, when the
whole world roared around me like a bursting sea. Only
it was a sea of mud, black and greasy, licking me under.
All night long, or so it seemed to me, I fought against it,
unable to cry for help, and the next day I was not able
to walk and so was put in the wagon, which lurched and
groaned and writhed over the rough roads.

My head ached and I was very miserable. Every jolt
of the wagon increased my pain, although I was packed in
between pillows, and everything that could be done for my
comfort had been done. I was quite sure my last hour
was approaching, and I was going to be buried by the
trail, like Linda. We had seen a little grave marked by a

66 CLEARING IN THE WEST

board taken from a wagon box, on which the name
“Linda,” was printed in white chalk on the green paint.
A handful of blue fringed gentians, faded and withered
lay on the fresh black earth.

I did not mind dying if it would stop my head from
beating—I would be glad to die! The ground would be
cold, but it would lie still. Maybe they would take me
back and lay me beside Linda.

The wagon suddenly stopped and someone picked me
up. Maybe I was dead. ... Now I thought I must be, for
I felt no pain. I had only a great desire to sleep.

“Better let Willie carry her, John,’ I heard mother
say, “she’s quite a good weight and your shoulder may
ache again.”

I felt myself being comfortably laid on my father’s
broad shoulder.

“Her, is it? A good weight? Poor child! I could
carry her to the Tower of Hook. She’s just the weight
of two dried lamb-skins.”

I opened my eyes then, but the light dazzled me and
I was too weary to talk. I drifted down into a deep sea
of contentment but vaguely through my dreams, I
thought of Linda under the blue flowers at the side of the
trail. I hoped she liked her grave and did not mind the
dark, and I was sure God would send an angel for both of
us, before the winter came. If this was dying, it was far
nicer than riding in the wagon.

Vaguely through my dreams I could hear my father
singing: °

“Shule, shule, shule, agra
Its time can only aise me woe
Since the lad o’ me heart
From me did part,
Schedate, avoureen, schlana,
I'll dye me petticoat
T’ll dye it red,

ON THE TRAIL 67

And through the world
Y’ll beg me bread,

I wish in me heart
That I was dead... .”

I roused at that, and squirmed in sudden fright.

“Don’t say that, dad,” I called down to him. “I don’t
want to die, now!’

“No more did she!” he laughed. ‘‘No one does,
though it’s often said.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t say it though,” I was wide
awake now... . “Does God know we don’t mean it?” I
asked fearfully.

“Oh, God knows right enough. He hears a lot that
He lets go in one ear and out the other. He knows we
all like to rave once in awhile.”

I settled down then, relieved and satisfied. God
wouldn’t take a short turn on me. He wouldn’t even re-
member what I said. God was like Lizzie and good at
forgetting.

CHAPTER VIII
COMPANIONS ON THE WAY

AT Portage la Prairie we stopped at the Hudson’s Bay
store and bought further supplies: beans, flour, bacon,
salt, nails, duffle, moccasins, a keg of syrup (Golden
Drop), dried apples, soda, pain-killer and yellow oil. It
was a big room with a rough lumber floor and blue
with tobacco smoke. <A sunburnt trader had come in
and was getting toothache drops. His face was swollen
so much one eye was completely shut. He had come from
Fort Macleod and he asked us about the roads. He said
the road west was not so bad, now, if the rain would hold
up. Indians in their blankets stood at the door of the
store, not saying a word to anyone, and from their mask-
like faces no one could tell their thoughts. No doubt they
resented the influx of white settlers and the carts loaded
with fur, passing on their way to Winnipeg. But the
buffalo was gone, their best friend, source of food and
clothes, so perhaps the struggle was over, now that the
battle was lost. I hoped they did not mind. Portage la
Prairie had a newspaper at this time called the
Marquette Review, and there was also a planing mill,
from which lumber was shipped out on the three
river boats. We knew the boats quite well, having
seen them make their way up and down the river, when
we lived at Silver Heights. They were the Cheyenne, the
Marquette, and the Manitoban.

Before we left Silver Heights, one of the neighbors
there, a Mrs. Armstrong, gave us a little dog, black and
white with collie markings, and on the journey he oc-
cupied a wooden keg nailed to the back of the wagon, and
slatted over to keep him in, but with spaces between the
slats to allow him to look out. He was a cheerful,

68

COMPANIONS ON THE WAY 69

friendly little fellow with puppy-blue eyes and white
marking splashed back from his mouth, giving his face
a pansy-like expression.

My joy in having such a pretty little pet, and the
brightness of his face seen through the slatted mouth of
the keg, helped me to keep my copper-toed boots passing
each other, as I walked behind the wagon. The miles
grew long and heavy sometimes even to my young feet.
But little “Watch” helped me to forget the toils of the
journey. Sometimes too, he ran beside me, guided by a
rope from his small leather collar, for, being a foolish
pup, there was always danger of his getting under the
wheels.

One day Hannah and I went into the wagon for a
ride, and when we came back, we found the pup was
gone. One slat had come unfastened and he had evidently
fallen out.

A desperate situation faced us! The day was
threatening rain; great purple thunder clouds were roll-
ing up from the west, coming right toward us. The
nearest water was four miles away, and the wagons must
be kept moving to reach the water, if possible before the
rain came. Every minute now was precious. We knew
that.

We took hurried counsel, and decided there was only
one thing to do, and saying nothing to anyone, ran back
on the road we had come. We must find little Watch.
We had to find him. Children who have many treasures
may regard them lightly, but our love for the little dog
was a passion.

Lightning split the dark clouds and a few big drops
fell around us. Rain would fil! the ruts and holes in the
road with water, and what chance could there be then for
a fat little pup only three months old? Hannah watched
one side of the road and I the other, and we ran and
called.

We were afraid to look back. If we were being called
it was better not to know it!

70 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I do not know how far we ran. The rain poured down
in silver rods, and thunder circled around us, but for once
I was not afraid. We prayed as people do in their sore
need, surely God would help us; little Watch was so little,
and so sweet. He couldn’t be left to die!

Suddenly ahead of us, we saw a glint of something
white in the tawny grass beside the road and joy clutched
our hearts. Hannah dashed ahead and picked him up.
He was alive and not even frightened; he had moved off
the road and was sitting up waiting for us. He seemed
to know we would come.

Then we both began to cry. But it was not because
it was raining and getting dark, and the wagons were
far out of sight. We cared nothing for any of these
things; we had our dog; we were rich again, and our
tears were tears of joy.

We began the return journey, running as fast as we
could....

Suddenly behind us came the sound of wheels, and a
trader in a light wagon drawn by bay horses drew up
beside us.

“Where are you off to, kids?” he questioned.

We told him. He helped us into the wagon over the
front wheel, and we sat on the high spring seat beside
him. He trotted his team when he heard the whole story.

“We'll get you back to your folks as soon as we can,”
he said, and his voice had a strangeness about it. We had
never heard anyone who talked like him. He gave us a
blanket to wrap around us to keep off the rain.

We met a man on horse-back who drew up beside
the wagon and asked some questions about a man with a
black team. Our friend was sorry, but he had not seen
anybody. We were afraid we were going to be delayed
and were wondering just what sort of a reception we
would get when we rejoined our family. Well! Any-
way, we had the dog.

Soon after we got away from the man on horse-back,
we saw someone coming, swinging a lantern, and we were

COMPANIONS ON THE WAY 71

glad to see it was Will. Will would not blame us. He got
in the wagon too and we were soon at the camp—I do not
remember any unpleasantness.

That night the trader camped beside us, and had
supper with us. He had a little oiled tent which fitted
under his wagon. Mother asked him to have breakfast
with us, but when we got up he was gone. Some days
after we heard that the United States police had sent two
men on horse-back to look for a desperado, who had shot
a sheriff in Montana. When last seen he was driving a
black team.

Horse teams were rare on the trail and we thought
of our trader. Mother refused to think evil of him. “His
horses were bay,” she said, “and anyway he was no
desperado; he was as nicely mannered a young man as
you will meet anywhere, and besides he was good to the
little girls.”

After we reached home we heard that a settler near
Portage Ja Prairie had his team changed one night. He
had bay horses, and one morning he found a black team in
his pasture. But they were better horses, so he said he
wasn’t complaining.

We often though about our friend and hoped he was
safe.

CHAPTER IX
THE FIRST WINTER

It was a warm clear day with blue shadows toward the
end of September when we left the main road, and turned
southwest on the Yellowquill trail toward the Assiniboine
River. The muddy roads with their terrors were past
for we were now traversing a high sandy country with
light vegetation, and raspberry brakes. The blue sky
had a few white clouds that held the colors of the sunset.
The hills around were pricked with little evergreen trees.
The oxen sensing the nearness of home, stepped livelier
and everyone’s spirits rose.

The wagons had to be locked going down the long bank
of the river, and at the bottom we came face to face with
the clear, zinc-blue water of the Assiniboine. Willows
hung over the stream, whitening as the wind turned their
leaves, and just above the water, on a dry grassy bank,
a fire was soon burning and the black pot boiling. We
had a tin stove which held two pots, and a bannock was
soon cooking in bacon fat, and the smell of coffee hung
pleasantly over the camp.

The river water, clear and soft, gave us all the op-
portunity of a bath, and with a change of clothes, peace
and contentment came down upon us with a great feeling
of thankfulness. The little black cow “Lady,” who never
needed to be hobbled at night, “let down” her milk that
night as if she knew her long jorney was almost over.

In the early dawn we forded the river. The big oxen
drawing the covered wagon, and driven by Will, went
first and when we saw them safely climbing up the op-
posite bank, it was easy to get the little oxen to take the
water. The pony cart came next and the cow followed.

72

THE FIRST WINTER 73

She had all the intelligence of a good dog and needed no
guidance.

We crossed just above the junction of the two rivers,
the Souris and Assiniboine, for though the waters are
low in September we thought it best not to risk the added
volume of the Souris. The Souris was a pretty little
stream with deep pools connected by an amber current
that twisted around the sand-bars. Both rivers had good
hard gravelly bottoms.

And so the last barrier was passed.

I don’t believe any of us knew what a strain this
fourteen-day journey was on my brother Will. He was
only twenty years of age, and on him, the responsibility
of bringing us out to this great new unknown country,
had fallen. I have heard him say that when he got the
wagons over the Assiniboine, knowing there were only
seven miles more of easy travelling, a thousand years
rolled off him.

We reached home at noon of the day we forded the
two rivers and found George all ready for us, with a fine
pot of potatoes cooked.

No one could fail to be thrilled with the pleasant spot
that Will had found for us. A running stream circled
the high ground on which the log house stood. Away
to the south, hazy in the distance, stood the Tiger
Hills; to the northwest the high shoulder of the Brandon
Hills, dark blue and mysterious, enticed the eye. Near
the house there were clumps of willows on the bank of the
creek and poplar bluffs dotted the prairie north of us.

Before we were unloaded from the wagons, mother
was deciding the place she would plant the maple seeds
she had brought with her from Winnipeg, the hardy
Manitoba maple.

The log house had a thatched roof, made from prairie
hay and was not yet chinked, but it had a floor of rough
lumber brought to Currie’s Landing on a river boat, and
one window facing west. One window might be thought
insufficient for a house that must lodge eight people, but

74 CLEARING IN THE WEST

light and air came in unbidden through many openings;
indeed how to keep out the cold became our great problem.
We brought a real stove with us and pipes and the first
day saw it set in place and mother could then begin her
bread, real bread, made with a Royal yeast cake, to dis-
place the soda bannock, cooked in bacon grease, which
had been the backbone of our diet on the journey.

The weather favored us; for a long fair autumn gave
us an opportunity to get ploughing done and a good stable
built for the oxen and Lady. Cattle have been wintered
outside in Manitoba but my father believed it was too
severe a strain for any animal, and the winter that fol-
lowed justified his fear.

I remember the pleasant autumn weather, with blue
veils over the hills and the long clear moonlight nights,
with the light shining in through the unchinked logs, over
the bed, where Lizzie, Hannah and I slept.

The stove stood in the middle of the floor, with a long
L-shaped length of pipe running to a tin chimney, with
a spark arrester in the roof. We had home-made bed-
steads made of poplar poles and spread with planks to
hold the feather ticks, and with plenty of bedding and
pillows we slept very comfortably. Sometimes the how]l-
ing of the prairie wolves drove away sleep and caused me
to shudder with fear; there was something so weird and
menacing in their shrill prolonged cries, which seemed to
rise and fall in a rhythm which brought them nearer and
nearer. Just how terrible their wailings could be, we
were destined to know all too soon.

I have spoken of the great love we had for our little
dog, and the place that animals fill in the lives of lonely
children, but I have not said enough about “Lady,” the
little black cow. She was a graceful, gentle, intelligent
little animal, and had supplied us with milk and butter all
summer. On the trip she followed the wagons without
being tied, sometimes stopping for a mouthful of grass
by the roadside and then hurrying on to fall in behind
the procession, and at night when we camped she got her

THE FIRST WINTER 75

oats when the oxen got theirs; and by this means she
made the long trek of a hundred-and-eighty miles without
losing her fine sleek coat.

She was particularly my mother’s pet and every scrap
of food from the table was saved for Lady, who relished
cooked potatoes, crusts of bread, or a bit of turnip, and
was partial to anything that was sweet, and often for a
special treat, was given a slice of bread, soaked in syrup.

She wandered the prairie at will, though never
strayed far, and came home running if she heard a wolf
howl, her fine big cairngorm eyes wide with fear. Before
the stable was built, she spent the night close beside the
house, and often in the stillness I was glad to hear her
regular breathing, close beside me, on the other side of
the unchinked wall.

It was in December; Lady was still milking and that
precious quart of milk night and morning was a welcome
addition to the porridge breakfasts. The stable had been
built, a three-sided building whose sod roof was covered
with prairie hay, two stacks of which stood on the north
to give more shelter and in this, the four oxen were tied
every night and Lady went in and out as she liked.

The hay stacks were fenced with poplar poles to keep
out the oxen for it was thought wise to save the hay for
the time when the deep snow would prevent them from
getting at the prairie grass.

The thirteenth of December came and with it stark
tragedy. Will who had gone out first, brought in the
bitter word. Lady was dead! She had caught her horns
in the fence and in trying to extricate herself had fallen
and broken her neck.

We were eating breakfast when Will came in, and I
was pouring milk from a glass pitcher on my porridge
when the black blow fell. We cried out that it could not
be, and hurried to the place of horror! There she lay,
cold and stiff with horribly staring eyes. No warm place
under her now to warm bare feet; no gentle regular
breathing. It was mg first sight of death and it shattered

16 CLEARING IN THE WEST

something in me that could never be replaced, a sense of
security maybe. Now I knew that there was always a
grim possibility, a shadow that can fall on the brightest
day. A sinister presence unseen, but none the less real.

Years afterwards, the Rev. Isaac Newton Robinson,
a Methodist minister held revival meetings in Northfield
school and during one of his appeals quoted the words,
new to me then,

“O sinner think
Of the feeble link
Between you and the grave.”

I knew what it was. Lady alive, breathing, warm
beloved Lady with her soft brown eyes and sweet breath,
who came to us when we called her and followed us like a
dog; and then the ghastly misshapen bulk, cold and stiff
with blind glassy eyes, that made no response, no motion.

The ground, iron hard with frost, could not be dug
to bury her. So the men drew her away behind a
poplar grove and we all cried again, as we watched that
melancholy procession moving over the snow, the little
dog marching behind barking.

And the nights that followed were terrible when the
wolves fought and cursed and cried over her and we
had to hear them, and see them too, for it was clear
moonlight and they seemed to come from the four corners
of the world, snarling, snapping, hungry ghouls, grey,
lean and terrible.

It was on one of these nights that we saw for the first
time the Northern Lights in all their majesty and awe-
some beauty, and it was not only in the north that they
flickered and flashed, and rolled and marched, for their
bright banners ran up into the highest parts of the sky
right over our heads. If we had not been in such trouble
over the death of Lady, we would ..ave loved all this color
and movement, but there did not seem to be any kindness
in the sky in spite of the pale greea and rose and lilac

THE FIRST WINTER 77

streamers fluttering and dancing like long lines of fairies’
petticoats hung out to dry on a windy day.

I tried to think that what I saw was really great com-
panies of little angels out having a game of “Crack the
Whip,” all dressed in their lovely dresses, bright and
shiny, and that the crumpling sound I heard was the
rustling and creaking of the silk as they swung together,
but I could not get far with any thought as pleasant as
that, with poor Lady lying out under the moon and the
wolves fighting over her.

Long after the last bone of Lady was gone, the wolves
still came back on the moonlight nights hoping that some
other evi] thing had befallen us, and their cries were so
horrible that I had to sleep with my head under the pillow
instead of on it.

Mother wrote her friend, Mrs. Edward Lowery :—
“Our first Christmas was not very happy because we lost
our nice little black cow. ...I can’t tell you how I miss
her. ... She had winsome ways, coming to the door and
shoving it in with her nose if it wasn’t latched, or rub-
bing the latch up and down, reminding me it was milking
time. I had great hopes of Lady! She was going to
establish a herd for us, all having her gentle disposition,
but that’s past! You know I do not cry easily but that
morning I did. Just for a minute, and when I saw I was
breaking up my whole family, I had to stop, though I
would have been the better of a good cry to ease my heart,

but when a woman has children, she has no freedom, not\,

even the freedom to cry.

Lady was more than a cow to us. She was a pleasant
companion. Poor Will felt it terribly. He always knows
what I feel better than any of the others, and he kept
saying: “Don’t cry, mother, I can’t bear to see you cry!
Just as soon as the snow is gone, I’ll go to the Portage and
get two cows—he will too, poor lad, tramping every step
there and back. But there can never be a cow like Lady—.
We're all well now, the little girls had sore heels; blood
out of order, no doubt, not enough variety in their food,

”

78 CLEARING IN THE WEST

but salt and water healed them in time. The snow was
six feet deep on the level, but Willie has snow shoes. He
and George get out. We have come through well so far,
and will nave a garden this summer. There’s a great
comfort in a garden. It’s heartsome to see things grow.
There are neighbors coming too, a family from Renfrew.
That is good news!

I get worried sometimes about my own health and
wondering what would happen to the little girls, if I
should be taken. Boys can always get along but it’s a
hard world for girls; sometimes I blame myself for com-
ing away so far. There’s no doctor closer than Portage,
which is eighty miles away. I can’t say this to anyone
but you, I don’t blame Willie; he is a good boy, if there
ever was one. It’s at night, when every one is asleep and
this great prairie rolls over, so big and empty, and cruel.
John is as happy as a king, never thinks of anything
beyond to-day, so long as he has a place to grow potatoes!
He has a field now for his pigs—I never can like pigs,
dirty squealing brutes, never satisfied, but we’ll be glad
of the meat next winter, and will have some to sell too,
if there is anyone to buy them.

Much love to all of you. We’ll see you again some day,
God willing. John sends his love too, we speak of you
often and all the dear friends.”

But the trials of that long first winter were not ended.
In March the snow fell continually, it seemed, and with
the wind shrieking over the plains, packing the snow in
drifts as high as houses, we were entirely shut in. It was
in this time of isolation that my eldest sister took sick,
with a heavy cold, that in spite of turpentine and goose oil
and mustard foot-baths, went steadily on through chills
and fevers, until it seemed that she would die. She had
reached a state of coma, her jaws were locked, and her
eyes though still open, did not see. She lay, with her two
long braids of bright brown hair, beside her little white
face, a tired young traveller, ready to drop out of the
race.

THE FIRST WINTER 79

My mother, who was a wonderful nurse, had tried
every remedy she had, but there was not one flicker of
response. Hannah and I were doing what we could to
get meals ready, but on this worst day of the storm, no
one wanted to eat. It was like a horrible dream. The
storm tore past the house, and fine snow sifted through
the walls.

Mother came out from behind the quilts which hung
around Lizzie’s bed, and sitting down in the rocking chair
buried her face in her hands.

“I’m beaten, John,” she said. “I can’t save her! I
am at the end of my resources!”

Her shoulders shook with sobs and it seemed like the
end of everything. No one spoke. Behind the quilts,
that labored breathing went on, hoarser and heavier.

“My little girl is dying for want of a doctor, in this
cursed place—that never should have been taken from the
Indians. ...

The Indians have their revenge on me now, for it’s
tearing my heart out, to see my little girl die before my
eyes.... We shouldn’t have come John, so far—so cruelly .
far—-What’s money ?—What’s land? What comfort can
we have when we remember this—dying for want of a
skilled hand—the best child I ever had. Her willing
little feet and clever hands will soon be as cold as iron.
The fluid is rising in her lungs, and I can’t stop it, only
a doctor could drain it off and give her a chance.”

My father tried to comfort her. ‘“You’ve done all
anyone could do, Lettie; don’t give up, you always said
you wouldn’t give anyone up while they were breathing.
You’re tired woman dear, tired and discouraged, but
Maybe she’s right at the turn now, who knows?”

I couldn’t stand any more—I got my coat and cap and
mittens and slipped out. I could get to the stable and stay
in with the oxen for awhile. The house had grown hor-
rible to me.

When I got out I waited in the shelter of the house
for a lull in the storm; the cold struck my face like a lash

80 CLEARING IN THE WEST

and seemed to sink its teeth in me—but it gave me a
savage relief too. I didn’t care if it did strike me! I
would face it! I would take its blows! I made my way
against it to the stable and stood watching the turmoil of
snow; there was no earth and sky now, just one great
rolling confusion that cleared for a moment, then thick-
ened and rolled and screamed past. I couldn’t think of
anything only that Lizzie was going to die, and we
couldn’t do without her!

In the lull of the storm, I could see perhaps a hundred
yards across the creek, and over the drifts I saw a man
approaching. My heart turned over with joy, and I ran
back to the house, bursting with the news.

Someone was coming on snow-shoes.

He came in hastily shutting the door quickly behind
him to keep out the storm. A big man in a fur coat; one
cheek was frozen but he had a handful of snow to rub
it out.

“T heard you had a sick girl,” he said, “and I have
some medicine in my bag. I am the Methodist minister
who has just come to Millford. My name is Hall—
Thomas Hall.”

“You are as welcome as an angel of God,” mother said
solemnly, as she rose to meet him.

From the moment he entered the feeling of the house
changed. I saw the fear vanish from mother’s face. She
was herself in a moment, taking his coat and cap, setting
a chair for him beside the stove, and putting on the tea
kettle.

When the chill was gone from his clothing he went to
see Lizzie and felt her pulse. “She has a good strong
heart and I believe we can pull her through; she has youth
on her side and God always helps,” he said.

I could have knelt at his feet and worshipped him.

For three days he stayed with us, taking charge of
the case like a doctor and when he left, Lizzie was able
to speak and could drink beef tea. She made a complete
recovery in the next few weeks.

CHAPTER X
SPRING CAME AT LAST BRINGING NEIGHBORS

WHEN the spring came, Will walked to Portage la
Prairie—eighty miles and brought back two red cows,
and from these our herd grew. They were just cows;
that gave milk and ate grass, chewed their cuds and
switched off flies; and in season bore their young, wabbly
little sprawlers, but they could not take Lady’s place.

Perhaps, in fairness to the two cows, I should say
they were over shadowed by another factor. Will brought
home a cat at the same time, a black and white cat, named
Philip, a gift from Mrs. Sutcliffe, who had a stopping
house on the Portage Plains.

Philip was a full-grown cat, bearing on his portly
person, evidences of hardship and struggle, tips of ears
were gone, and a crook in his tail gave him a swagger
in his walk. But he would purr, when greatly pleased;
and he walked abroad in search of gophers. The little
dog Watch, who had not seen a cat in his life-time, let
one loud and distressful yelp when he saw Philip and
the battle was on.

Hannah and I underteok to allay the ancient grudge
between our two pets, trying to reason with them and
bring them together amicably. On the dog’s part, there
was a desire for reconciliation even after he had been
clawed and bitten, but Philip’s only medium of com-
munication with little Watch, continued to be a spit with
elevation of back fur! He remained a mean tempered
arrogant old rascal, as long as he lived. But he was
furry and soft and would purr, and we bestowed on him
a large measure of unrequited affection.

The house, which was to receive a family from Ren-
frew, stood about three miles from our house, and all

81

82 CLEARING IN THE WEST

that first long winter, it served as an emblem of hope to
us, across the snow. It was a square frame house, built
by Mr. Naismith and his brother-in-law, Tom Dunfield,
who had returned to their home in Renfrew for the
winter.

One day we saw wagons arriving and great excite-
ment prevailed. We had neighbors! It wouldn’t be long
until we had a school, life had begun. While we specul-
ated and talked and wondered, mother set a batch of
bread and took me with her and went over to meet the
strangers.

Mrs. Naismith had the loveliest straw-colored hair
done in braids around her head, and when she made a cup
of tea, she served it in cream china cups with rosebuds.
The family were all boys except one little girl, the baby,
a very pretty little thing with big blue eyes like her
mother, and the same wealth of golden hair. The boys
were shy and would not play with me, but Minnie let me
sit beside her in a big black rocking chair, which had a log
cabin back and cushions, and my heart overflowed with
joy to know there were children so near. And I know
my mother was never so lonely again. Mrs. Naismith,
. next to my own mother, will always typify the pioneer

-“woman to me, calm, cheerful, self-reliant, and undaunted.

In 1882 we built our house; logs had been brought for
two winters from the bush, squared and made ready and
there came a great day when the neighbors gathered, men
and women and the house went up, with great good will.
The men gave their help freely bringing their own axes,
and planes, and saws; and it was an occasion of excite-
ment and pleasure. In Ontario, “barn raisin’s,” were
often accompanied by liquor drinking, and sometimes ac-
cidents and fights occurred as a result, but there was
nothing of this, at ours. My mother was strong in her
belief that liquor was one of the devil’s devices for con-
founding mankind; and anyway there was no liquor
in the country at that time.

But there was a long table set in the shadow of the

SPRING CAME AT LAST BRINGING NEIGHBORS _ 83

old house; where roast chicken, potatoes, turnips, custard
pie, current buns and big pots of tea, cheered the workers.

I remember the “raisin’,” not only because it was a
great event, as a new house must always be, but because
it was on this day that we were given one of the good
gifts of my childhood. Mr. and Mrs. Naismith, brought
us @ pup, a lovely black and white pup, half Newfound-
land. We knew that their dog had pups, we had seen
them, but we had not even hoped to get one, for we had
one dog, and pups were so precious and in such great
demand, they were not casually asked for. But was this
little fellow welcomed? I spent the day of the raising
carrying him in a basket, so afraid [ was that in the
excitement someone might step on him; we called him
“Nap,” and he grew to be a beautiful dog, the best loved
of any dog I ever owned.

The house was a great joy to us, a clean new lumber-
scented house, with a big room downstairs, a bedroom for
father and mother, a real stairs, and two bedrooms above,
and a large kitchen with two windows and a pantry. It
still stands, bent a little by the heaviness of years, but its
beams have held and the corners still split the winds. It
is a tool house and workshop now on my brother’s farm,
but to me it is a storehouse of happy memories.

The first summer, flower beds were made in front of
the house, round beds, in which mignonette, portulaca
and balsams were planted. The beds were edged with
buffalo bones, from the piles which lay along the creek.
The buffalos had been gone only a year when we arrived,
and the bone piles indicated the places where Indians had
held their feasts. Arrow-heads of bone, and occasional
broken bows with thongs of rawhide rewarded our
search. Most significant were the beaten paths leading
to the water holes, still called buffalo runs where the hoof
marks were almost as clear as the day they were made.

It was sad to think of the buffalo, and how they had
been killed, so wastefully, by the hunters from American
cities, and yet, the buffalo had to go if the country were

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to be opened up for settlers. Some of the people believed
the Indians had destroyed the buffalo, killing them, and
using only their tongues for food, but that was not true.
The Indians could not possibly have exterminated such
great herds. The American hunters had done it, selling
the hides in Minneapolis, and the meat too. No doubt
they considered them their own buffalo, even if they had
come to Canada looking for better feeding grounds.

The last buffalo had been seen the year before we ar-
rived, but I held to the hope that I might some day come
over the top of a knoll and see the dark brown, curly
breasted, heavily set animals, with their great shoulders
and small hindquarters, feeding on some grassy meadow.

The Indians still had bags of pemmican, after 1880,
which is buffalo meat sun dried, and beaten to a pulp and
mixed with berries, probably saskatoon, or cranberries,
and pressed into bags; it was a black, hard mass, with
bits of hide and hair in it, for the squaws who made the
pemmican were not always particular. Still pemmican
was hearty fare, and on the prairie in the cold winter,
not to be despised.

The buffalo was a fat animal, and in the roasting of
their meat, there must have been great supplies of fat,
which the Indians allowed to burn in the fires. My
mother’s frugal Scotch heart was grieved when she
thought of this waste, and she often wondered why the
Indians did not use some of the fat to grease the wooden
wheels of their carts, and so prolong their usefulness, and
end the weird groanings and dismal creakings of the pro-
testing axles. But maybe the creakings and whinings
were liked by the red men, and made the music of the trail
for them.

In 1884 there was an effort made to gather up the
bones for fertilizer, and five dollars a ton was paid for
them in Regina, Saskatchewan.

CHAPTER XI
THE HEN-HOUSE DOooR

Our flock of hens, little and big, numbered twenty-six in
the fall of 1882, and they were comfortably housed in a
tidy little log hen-house with a pitched roof made from
wide rough boards. One window let in light and air, and
the door, fastened with a wooden button, had to be closed
each night to prevent marauding mink or weasels from
entering. Living beside a creek has its disadvantages, for
these blood-thirsty little animals that lived in the clay
banks, menaced the lives of our hens.

One night in December the blow fell! For by some
subterranean passage weasels had made an entrance to
the hen-house, and in the morning the twenty-six hens lay
dead on the floor, each with her throat slit. The weasels
had gone the way they came leaving our poultry project
in ruins.

It was a severe loss, but we recovered from it, by the
kindly help of our neighbors the next spring. I think
Mrs. Naismith organized the chicken shower which estab-
lished once more our feathered industry.

One lovely June day, when the prairie was at its best
with buttercups, and wild peas, the neighbors came from
the four corners of the compass, our four neighbors,
each with a box in the wagon and in each box was a hen
and chickens, and strangely enough, each hen bore a re-
semblance to the kind doner. Mrs. Naismith’s hen was a
fine golden yellow one with black markings. Mrs. William
Johnston’s a sturdily built Plymouth rock, iron gray and
placid. Mrs. Ingram’s a graceful little white hen, and
Mrs. Burnett’s a coal black with shining eyes. We called
them: Nancy, Mary, Georgina and Annie, after their
owners, or rather, we tried to apportion to them these

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names, but mother suppressed the suggestion. She said
the names of respectable married women were not to be
lightly bandied about a farmyard.

A plank floor was put in the hen-house and other pre-
cautions were taken against mink and weasel, so our flocks
grew steadily after that. The next year we had a pond
made for ducks and they too grew and multiplied.

Shutting the hen-house door became one of my chores.
At sun-down it must be closed for every decent hen goes
in as soon as the shades of evening fall. When we later
added a few turkeys my cares increased. Turkeys know
nothing and care nothing. Death has no terrors for them.
Rain kills them when they are young so they walk out in
it every chance they get, piping their melancholy little
notes; and so far as lies in them, they resist rescue. I
always felt it was a low trick to set a hen on turkey eggs.

Of all fowl, hens are easily the most intelligent. There
is a core of real good hard sense in every hen, and in ad-
dition to this, some of them are distinct personalities.

The yellow hen given us by Mrs. Naismith had the
misfortune to freeze her feet one winter. She was a
born rover and once had to spend the night out and it was
a cold night too. We found her on the sheltered side of the
hen-house in the morning, with her feathers fluffed out
and her temper equally rufiled. She blamed everyone but
herself for what had happened.

We brought her in, applied coal-oiled rags to the
frosted toes and gave her a bran mash with pepper in it.
She recovered from her hard experience but the ends of
her claws were too badly damaged and poor Nancy found
she could no longer scratch.

The next spring, she became a problem for she wanted
to hatch. She was shut up in a box; she was tethered by
a cord, to one of the little maple trees; she had fluffy
skirts put on her legs, which take up the attention of some
hens and make them forget their maternal urge. But
Nancy could not be distracted. She demanded her right-
ful place in the community. Why should she be deprived

THE HEN-HOUSE DOOR 87

of the joys of family life, because she had lost a few
toes? She kept up her agitation, until mother gave in and
let her have six eggs, and peace reigned for twenty-one
days.

Then Nancy stepped off her nest with six chickens
and led them straight to the kitchen door and noisily
applied for relief.

She couldn’t scratch up any seeds for them, of course,
but we had to let her think she was doing it. Many times
a day someone had to take bread, soaked in milk, or boiled
wheat out to Nancy. If not, Nancy walked in at the
kitchen door with her six trailers and raised a disturb-
ance. The only way to keep her out was to supply
plenty of provender. All the other hens were afraid of
her, and she had full right of way at the water pans.
She couldn’t fight with her maimed claws, but I have no
doubt she had a retentive memory and a scurrilous tongue.

We all liked her, so no one minded giving her a hand
with the chickens. But when they were feathered out,
she began to steal chickens from the other hens, just to
show the world, that she was as good as the best. No one
knew how she did it, or what inducements she offered,
but she increased her flock to ten and before the season
was over had adopted two lumbering young turkeys
whose real mother had tired of them.

It was a sight to see her sitting over her brood
at night, with the vacuous faces of the young turkeys
sticking out through her feathers.

She couldn’t hold herself on the roost, so we made her
a box with a little bar across, just high enough to lift her
slightly off the floor. She managed to stay on this by
leaning against the back and side of the box, and was
comfortable, I think. She was never quite reconciled to
the low seat, when all the other hens had gone up to roost
and sometimes flew up and tried to balance herself on the
roost, but she couldn’t manage it, with her poor little
stumps of claws.

The hen-house door was a profound influence in my

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childhood. Once I forgot it and wakened in the dark
middle of the night with a sickening sense of guilt! The
weasel might have come! Or a mink! Every last hen
became suddenly dear to me, a thousand times more
precious then ever before—now that I had betrayed
them! And Nancy, poor Nancy, sitting on the floor, she
would be the first to feel the weasel’s tooth!

I got out of bed and carrying my boots in my hand
crept down the stairs. The slightest sound would waken
mother so I went as softly as a weasel too, but the steps
in the stairs squeaked and my knees cracked like pistols.

But I got out, closing the door like a thief, and crossed
the yard; the night was as dark as the inside of a cow,
not a star even, and quiet as atomb. It was a cold night
too in the fall, but I was so frightened I felt nothing. If
the hens were all dead, I might as well die too, like the
Roman generals who ran on their swords when they lost
the battle.

I knew I was near the door and was feeling for it
with both hands when suddenly I stumbled over some-
thing warm and furry. It was Nap, precious Nap, the
dog, who ordinarily slept in the straw stack. He was
guarding the door.—Goed old Nap!—He was trying to
cover up my misdeed. I went in to see if everything was
safe and felt on the roosts. Sleeping hens stirred
drowsily as I ran my hand over their hard little feet.
Evidently all was well. Nap had saved them—and me.
I felt for Nancy on the floor, and got a re-assuring peck
from her, sweet as a hand shake.

I made my way back to the house so relieved I could
have danced for joy, but I could feel the cold now, piercing
through my factory cotton night dress.

Responsibility is no doubt good for a child, for one
has to learn sooner or later to take it. The hen-house
door was my first big assignment and certainly left its
mark on me. For years after I grew up and was away
from the scenes of my childhood, I would waken from
sleep in a panic of fright. Had I closed the hen-house
door?

CHAPTER XII
SOcIAL ACTIVITIES

FIVE miles north east from our farm, at Millford, on the
Souris river where it was joined by Oak Creek, there was
a flour mill owned by Major Rodgers, who had brought
with him a colony of young men from Peterboro, Co-
burg and Port Hope in 1880. The boarding house was
run by Mr. and Mrs. George Motherwell and Mrs.
Motherwell’s sister, Maria Somers; and the store was
owned by John Brown, late of Owen Sound. William
Turnbull, a Scotchman, had a blacksmith shop, and John
Wheeler, an Irishman, had a cobbler’s shop.

The mail came from Brandon, for in 1882 the
Canadian Pacific Railway was extended that far, and
at least once a week, usually on Saturday, the mail
man reached Millford, with his welcome bags. It was a
thirty-mile drive so arrival in the winter was naturally
uncertain and the subject of many wagers. Would he
come at all? Would he come Friday? Or Saturday?
Before noon? Or afternoon? The petty cash of the
boarding house changed hands each week, according to
the mail man’s arrival. One sour old fellow, a true
pessimist, put up his twenty-five cents each week against
all takers that the mail man would not get through at all
and twice during the winter of 1882 raked in all the
stakes.

There were dances in the boarding house in the winter
evenings, when the two long board tables could be shoved
back to the walls and the bracket lamps turned up as
high as they would go without smoking. My brother
Will and George went to the first one, but mother sternly
held out against Elizabeth’s going. She was only fifteen
years old and much better in her bed. But when Will
put in a plea for his young sister, and Lizzie had just

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made for herself a beautiful wine-colored cashmere dress
with a cream lace collar and cuffs, (material sent by
Aunt Ellen) mother began to weaken. I know now how
she felt but then, none of us could see any reason for her
reluctance.

Lizzie went and no doubt made a sensation. She was a
pretty little girl, very slight and graceful, with two great
braids of glossy brown hair, bright brown eyes, fair skin
and high color, a sweet voice and ringing laugh which
set the dimples in her cheeks. Hannah and I were burst-
ing with pride when Will and George and Lizzie set out,
all in their best clothes and their shoes done with lamp-
black and tallow. They drove the oxen, in a sleigh and
were well covered with blankets and robes.

After that the weekly dances became a feature of our
lives, and though Hannah and I were years removed from
any such exciting pleasures, we planned ball-dresses, and
selected jewels, for ourselves, with a fine prodigality, and
wore them, according to our own testimonies with de-
vastating effect. Every eye in the room was on us we
said, when we entered the ball-room, and mothers of
marriagable daughters turned pale with envy when they
saw our dazzling beauty. What chance had their pallid
daughters now to gain the hand of Lord Ronald, and Lord
Elphinstone? We gossiped too, unmercifully, about our
rivals, and disposed of their matrimonial chances, in
stinging words. Lady Mary Manners was a “chit” from
school. The Duchess of Trent dyed her hair, and the
Countess of Whiffords’ two daughters, though stiff with
jewels, coulc never grace a baronial mansion, for one had
an evil temper, and the other one was bow-legged.

With the opposition thus well out of the way, the
Mooney sisters were ready to concede their own election.
... Each night after we had gone to bed, we carried along
the story through endless episodes.

The pup given us on the day the house was raised
grew into a fine big dog, and when he was a year old,

SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 91

I had him well broken as a sleigh dog. Each Saturday inl
the winter, I made the journey to Millford for supplies

for the week, and the mail. The Family Herald from{
Montreal brought the world to our door. We knew that

the boundary of Manitoba had been changed and en-.
larged, but that made but little difference to us. A lot of

good that would do us! A million acres of jack pine and

jack rabbits added to our territory! But any news of

railway extension kindled our hopes. Bitter denunci-

ation of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s insistence on its

monopoly was on every tongue, when it was known that

American companies were willing to come, but the Gov-

ernment at Ottawa had promised the Canadian Pacific

Railway Company they would have no rivals for twenty

years. No one blamed the Premier of Manitoba, honest

John Norquay, who, Conservative though he was, was

fighting his political friends at Ottawa, on behalf of the

people of his province, who far from the one line of rail-

way, were finding it hard to market their crops. The

matter of interprovincial transportation rightly belonged

to the Government at Ottawa, under the provisions of the

North America Act; but teamsters on the long trails, cold

and tired, were not disposed to consider fine points of

law. They wanted a shorter haul to market.

My father, who was a staunch Conservative, became
the apologist for Ottawa and the Canadian Pacific Rail-
way. He pointed out the expense the Canadian Pacific
Railway Company had incurred in building a coast to
coast line; and what about it, if they did get all the odd
number sections for twenty miles on each side of the rail-
way, and a twenty-year monopoly. What use was raw
land anyway? And if American companies were allowed
in they would soon own us, lock and barrel. The Govern-
ment saw this danger and wanted to keep us British.

Later when the Canadian Pacific Railway’s branch
line was built from Winnipeg to Glenboro sixteen miles
straight east of us, my father said that was near enough.
Who would want a railway any nearer? “Sure, you can

92 CLEARING IN THE WEST

go and come in a day,” he said, “and what more do you
want?”

But the younger members of the family were not satis-
fied so easily, and annexation with the United States, as
a solution of the deadlock over the delay in railway con-
struction, became the topic of conversation around the
nail kegs and sugar barrels in John Brown’s store in
Millford, or any place where the neighbors gathered.

The great event of our first three years was the
building of the school—two miles from our farm, a gov-
ernment school, for the upkeep of which a tax was placed
on each acre of land, and ten dollars a month was given
as a grant from the Provincial Government. I would be
ten years old that fall and I was deeply sensitive about
my age and my ignorance. Hannah, who had been to
school in Ontario and could read newspapers or anything,
was willing to teach me, but I would not be taught. I was
going to be a cowboy anyway, so why should I bother with
an education? I could count to a hundred and I would
never own more than a hundred head; all of which was a
bit of pretense on my part, a form of self-protection.

One of the neighbors, lately come from England, had
a boy my age who could read. Not only could, but did.
Even brought his books over when his family came to
visit my family and read. He stood in the middle of the
floor and intoned like a curate, page after page from some
dull book all about plum-cakes at a school-treat, and my
mother took the occasion to deplore my state of ignor-
ance. “Just listen to Frankie! And he is no older than
you are. Now don’t you wish you had Iet Hannah teach
you-——a big girl ten years old, who will not learn any-
thing.”

My heart was hot for revenge and it came, when
Frankie came out to play with me.

Frankie ran crying to his mother when I landed my
first blow on his neat little features and when he sob-
bed out the story of his injury, I reached new low levels
in the social scale. No one could defend my action; even

SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 93

Lizzie admitted it was a pretty low thing I had done—
to actually strike a visitor, but when it was all over and I
had been made apologize, I was still glad that I had done
it, it gave me such a glorious sense of relief. Lord it
over me—would he?

Philip, the old black and white cat, had a rival, a
sweet little silvery gray kitten with white paws and
breast brought by Will and George one day when
they came home from the Moggey farm on Oak Creek.
The Moggey family had lately come from Owen Sound.
We called her Sylvia, after the heroine of a story that was
running serially in the Family Herald, and she was the
prettiest little thing we had ever seen. Hannah wrote a
poem to her:

“Hail Sylvia, sweet and frail
Snowy breast and arching tail,
Whither cometh thee to bless
One poor family’s loneliness,
Princess in a feline dress?”

She slept on a pink quilt which covered our bed,
and when she lay a lovely ball of silver fur, in the centre
of that quilt Hannah and I often went to feast our eyes
on her loveliness. But again came tragedy.

Old Philip, tired of hearing this young interloper
praised and sung, killed her one evening. He grabbed
her when she was drinking from her saucer and shook
her. It was all over, before anyone could speak. One
shake and the tiny neck was broken and grief broke over
us in an overwhelming flood. Having accomplished his
evil purpose, Philip fled and was not seen for days.

For weeks afterwards, I believed she would come
back. I couldn’t make myself understand that death is
permanent; surely with all the cats in heaven, God would
send a good trusty angel down with Sylvia for us, when
we loved her so much. I often tiptoed with my eyes shut
into the room where our bed stood with my heart beating

94 CLEARING IN THE WEST

like a hammer, expecting, hoping, praying that the soft
ball of gray fur would be curled up on the quilt... .

We buried her on the sunny slope that ran down to the
creek, under a silver willow, whose shiny gray leaves
brought back the glorious sheen of our little friend’s
coat. We sharpened a shingle and drove it in at her head,
with a small stake at the foot, marked S and on the shingle
Hannah wrote, with a carpenter’s pencil:

‘Here lies dear little Sylvia Moggey,
A thing that died oh far too young,
From a bite from Philip Sutcliffe
Philip bit her on the tongue.”

He didn’t exactly bite her on the tongue, he shook her
roughly, but we couldn’t put that in a rhymne; we had
tried hard to tell the exact truth, even sought help in this
honest endeavor. Try it, if you think it is easy!
But what did it matter? She was dead.

To the sunny southern slope, where the wind turned
over the silver leaves with a gentle sound that broke
my heart afresh for it made me think of Sylvia’s gentle
purring, I often went to lay a flower on her grave.

Hannah pointed out that it was strange how often I
was overcome with this desire just when the dishes were
ready to be washed. We had high words over this, and
in the end I set up a grave for myself and wrote my own
verse or at least composed it, for I couldn’t write:

“Four dear dogs—they died alone,
Nobody saw them, or heard them groan,
There they died by the drifts of snow
While the wind rocked their tails to and fro.”

Hannah did the writing for me but under protest.
She knew I never had four dogs and so naturally had not
lost them; that I had created them merely to cut them
off in their prime, and she said a person shouldn’t lie,
even in a epitaph, but in that contention, I found out
afterwards that she was in a hopeless minority.

CHAPTER XIII
THE CHURCH AND THE SCHOOL

In the summer of 1882 the church at Millford was built
by volunteer labor, though the expense of the material
was met by the Missionary Society of the Methodist
Church of Canada. Rev. Thomas Hall, the good angel
who came out of the snow storm to us, the March before,
had the full qualifications for a Missionary, for he could
do anything.

Under his guidance the church was ready for oc-
cupation in the fall of the year, when a great Harvest
Home Festival opened the church activities of the Mill-
ford district, and every resource of the neighborhood was
brought to the success of that event. Mrs. Naismith did
not even withhold her rose-bud china.

On a bright September afternoon when every person
within a circle of ten miles came, and the field around the
church was black with wagons, ox teams and a few
horses, the church was dedicated to the “services of God
and humanity.”

The first couple married in the church were Roman
Catholics and Mr. Hall used the sign of the Cross at their
request in the ceremony, which led to some criticism, but
my father defended Mr. Hall and said as Christian peo-
ple we should never forget that the cross was the sacred
symbol of our faith. ‘Many a time,” he said, “when I
was on the Ottawa and our raft was nearing the rapids
I crossed myself with the Catholic lads on the raft. It
helped me to remember that God was with us even in the
high water.”

The first funeral in the church was that of the min-
ister’s own little boy, his only son, Wilbur, a handsome
little lad of three with bright golden curls; who died in

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the spring of ’82 when the wild anenomes were spreading
their blue carpet over the prairie. We made a blanket
of them to cover the plain lumber coffin, by opening a
new gunny sack and sticking the stems of the flowers
through the open mesh. The church was full of their
sweetness, that hot spring morning as we sat and listened
to the solemn words of the burial service, and when the
little coffin was lowered into the grave on the hillside and
the clods of earth fell on it, it was with a softly muted
sound.

A Sunday school was started in the little church at
Millford and a Mr. Calverly became the superintendent.
Mr. Hall had three preaching places and so could not be
at the Sunday school. We drove to church which was held
in the evening, but it was a long walk to get to Sunday
school in the afternoon, a five mile journey each way.

Great excitement prevailed when Northfield School
was finished. We heard that the teacher was a man, who
had taken a homestead at Pelican Lake and had been
teaching near Winnipeg, and the school would open one
Monday morning. I had a new pair of boots and dark
gray hand knitted stockings and a homespun dress, some
of my mother’s own weaving, which Lizzie had made up
for me. White lace was frilled in at the neck to keep
the flannel from scratching me and, as my hair was
shingled, I needed no hair ribbon. The dress was gray
and red in small checks. I wished I could have some
“boughten,” material for my dress, I was sure I would
be the only girl at school with a homespun dress and, I
was. I think mother had been somewhat hurt with us
because we all preferred “boughten” goods. It was in
vain she told us of how long the homespun would wear.

I can’t remember why Hannah did not go that first
palpitating day. Bert Ingram called for me and we set
off in the gloom of an October snow storm. The Ingrams
who came from Woodstock, Ontario, were our nearest
neighbors, living one mile west of us on section eighteen.
Bert had been to school in Woodstock, and was a real

THE CHURCH AND THE SCHOOL 97

man of the world in my eyes. He had a tailored suit of
gray tweeds, knee pants, a tweed coat with pockets and
a leather belt and a skull cap. He carried a pea shooter,
too, and said if the teacher gave him any lip he would
sock him in the eye. Bert was two years older than I,
and reading and writing and number work held no terrors
for him. .

We hesitated for a minute at the fire-guard,—the one
improvement made on the school property—six furrows
of plowing to check a possible prairie-fire. School was
in; heads showed at the two windows. The question of
whether we should walk in, or knock held us up. It was
settled for us, by the teacher rapping on the window in a
way that suggested speed, and we went in.

The teached sat behind a desk of unpainted wood; and
when he said good morning he smiled at us, and asked us
our names. Bert told him, his and mine too. By this
time, I did not know mine.

He told us we could sit together, until he got the
classes arranged. I was too shy to look around at the
strange children, but I was surprised to know how many
children there were. I wondered where they had all
come from. There were fifteen or sixten.

In front of us sat Annie Adams, dressed in a lovely
navy blue cashmere dress, with red piping and brass
buttons, and she had two long brown braids with a red
ribbon braided in them, and a bow on the nape of her neck
and one on the end of each braid. Not only that, but had
a circular comb in her hair and a red one at that. I felt
naked and ashamed with my round shingled head,
destitute of ribbons, or any place to put a ribbon. Annie
had every piece of equipment, a provident child could
think of. The frame of her slate was covered with red
felt and her slate rag, a piece of white cotton had a her-
ring-boned hem and a heavy glass salt cellar, filled with
water indicated a source of moisture. She even had a
pen-wiper.

The teacher was finding out what we knew, and look-

98 CLEARING IN THE WEST

ing at the books we brought. When he called me to come
up to his desk bringing my books, I had nothing to bring,
but a battered old “Second-part” Ontario Reader and a
slate with nothing on its frame. I could tell of no school
experiences at all, “I cannot read,” I confessed miserably.

He smiled at me again, and said, ‘‘Never mind that,
you’ll soon learn.”

“I am nearly ten,” I said, determined to tell all.

“Good!” he said, “a very good time to begin school;
you'll be reading in three months.” I looked at him then
and the compact was sealed. I knew I would be reading
in three months. I knew my burden of ignorance was
going to be lifted.

When I went back to my seat, I did not care how many
bows or combs Annie Adams had. I did not mind my
homespun dress. Something had happened and a new
world had opened before me. Another door had opened!

When I went home all I knew about the teacher was
that his eyes were gray with green pebbles in them, and
that he wore a lovely brown knitted coat, (we did not use
the word sweater) and that he had said I would soon be
reading.

The following spring we had our first Inspector, Dr.
Franklin of Portage la Prairie, and he came without
warning, just a knock at the door and he was in, a fine
looking tall man, with a brown mustache and side
whiskers, and a black frock coat which impressed us
deeply. I had not seen one before. Dr. Franklin had
started a Young Ladies’ Seminary but when the dire-
ful effects of the real estate boom of 1881-’82 began to
be felt, the young ladies were forced to return to their
homes, and the seminary languished. Dr. Franklin then
accepted the position of Government Inspector of Public
Schools.

I remember him with gratitude. I was in the Second
Reader then, and able to read. We were reading for him
the lesson called “The Faithful Dog,” and when my turn

THE CHURCH AND THE SCHOOL 99

came the story was approaching its heart-breaking
climax, where the traveller, having shot his dog thinking
he had gone mad, rides on and then suddenly remembers
the saddle bags left behind in his haste, and gallops back
to find them safe with the dog, who had crawled back
leaving blood drops all the way, and now lies beside them,
dead.

I mired down before I got that far and could not either
see or speak. It was an awkward moment, and some one
in the class laughed, and my humiliation was complete.
Dr. Franklin reached over and took the book from me,
and said “Very well read little girl! That’s really too
sad a story for a school-reader,’—then to Mr. Schultz,
“Here is a pupil who has both feeling and imagination, ,
she will get a lot out of life.” :

And at that I cried harder than ever.

Soon after Northfield School was built there came a
new settler to our district, a Mr. Frank Kinley who took
up a homestead just east of Mr. Naismith’s. He was
from Prince Edward County in Ontario and had been a
church worker all his life. He canvassed the neighbor-
hood to see the state of our spiritual life and found that
only a very few of the children went to Millford Sunday
School regularly and he suggested that we start a Sunday
school in our own school house.

The people welcomed the idea and money was sub-
scribed for papers and soon the opening day came. Mr.
Schultz, the teacher, gave his hearty support and under
his direction the school house was tidied up, wood-pile
straightened and everything made ready.

I don’t know how it was managed for the school room
was very small; but there were four classes organized.
My sister Lizzie had the little girls. Mrs. Ingram the
bigger girls, and Mr. Naismith and Mr. Kinley the two
classes of boys. Mrs. Ingram played a little organ, sent,
I believe from a Sunday school in Ontario. Mr. Kinley
had sent for the Sunday school lesson helps and each of
us was given a Quarterly with a red and white cover.

100 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Hymns appropriate to the lesson were given in these and
the music, so we learned the lessons in prose and verse.
In the day school each morning we read first the lesson
and then the daily readings. So when Sunday came we
were rooted and grounded in the scripture for that day
and the Bible stories flamed into reality with us.
Rehoboam and Jeroboam walked with us as we crossed the
prairie with our dinner pails and we had long discus-
sions on what would have happened if better counsel
had come at the call of the young king. We could see
how jealousy ate up Saul and the story of his throwing
the spear at David was so well dramatized one day at
noon that Billy Day nearly lost an eye.

Mr. Schultz gave us composition exercises and
memory work from the Scripture lessons too, and the
Bible became to us a living book over-flowing with human
interest. Mr. Schultz went home each Friday night,
fifteen miles south to Pelican Lake, but his support of
the Sunday school was a great factor in its success.

Mr. Kinley was a tall thin man, with light blue
kindly eyes and a hesitating way of speech. His wife, a
faded little women, was an invalid and had not
walked for years. Each Sunday, he carried her into
the school room, wrapped in a fur coat, even in
the hottest weather and deposited her in a _ rock-
ing chair, kept there for her use. From her veils and
mufflers her sweet little withered face looked out at us
with a little hopeful bitter-sweet smile, which often made
me want tocry. It must be terrible to be helpless! But
Mr. Kinley’s honest face beamed with love, when he spoke
of her. She was the guiding star of his life, he said.

Sometimes, when he reviewed the lesson at the close
of the Sunday school session, in his painstaking way, the
school grew restless. We had very little sentiment and
he had an irritating way of saying the same thing over
and over, and usually before the school was dismissed the
order was lost.

One day, I heard two of the teachers discussing the
situation with him. “I often wonder if the children are

THE CHURCH AND THE SCHOOL 101

getting anything out of the lessons,” Mrs. Ingram said,
“We try so hard and yet they seem so inattentive. I
watched my class to-day and not one was listening, they
were looking out the window, fumbling their books,
pinching each other, whispering. I declare, I am about
ready to quit.”
“Oh no!” Mr. Kinley said earnestly, ““we won’t quit,
I don’t believe they are as inattentive as they seem. They
may forget what we say now, but they will remember it
in years to come... . Anyway, we owe them a duty, no
matter how they receive our teaching, we owe it to them,
‘we, whose hearts have been touched with grace, we must
not eat our bread alone.”

*

I was about eleven when I heard this, and it opened |

another door for me, that gave me a glimpse of a
heavenly country here on earth. If ‘‘no one ate their bread
alone,’’ we could have a glorious and radiant world here
and now, a bright and happy world! There would be
joy and gladness and singing in it, with plenty of work
for everyone, but it would all be happy work; there would
be no bad tempers, or tattlings, or scoldings, or ox beat-
ing, or ugliness....I saw it in a flash, in a radiant beam
that shone around me in that moment, and I experienced
a warming of the heart that has never altogether faded

even in my darkest hours. ——o
That week I told the other children as we sat in the

shade of the wood-pile playing “knife,’’ what I had heard,
and how I felt about it, and we agreed that we would give
Mr. Kinley a surprise and this would probably please him
more than the mustache cup we were saving up to give
him for a Christmas present. We would listen when he
reviewed the lesson and we wouldn’t stir, not so much as
lift a finger, and he could talk as long as he liked. The
first Sunday, we sat like graven images, every eye on him,
and all went well, only Bennie Rothwell, began to laugh.
We had been afraid of Bennie, but Joe, his brother clap-
ped a handkerchief over Bennie’s nose and rushed him
out, and Mr. Kinley in his larger charity thought it was
a nose bleed.

R

CHAPTER XIV
PICNICS

THE spring of 1882 is remembered by all Manitobans,
for two reasons: the great floods that turned the peace-
ful rivers and streams into raging torrents of water; and
the great real estate boom that convulsed the city of
Winnipeg.

The flood concerned us closely, for even our own
shallow Spring Brook swollen by the spring thaws, and
rains, ran from bank to bank and had to be crossed on a
raft. The Souris River at the junction of Oak Creek,
where the little village of Millford stood, had widened
into an inland lake which filled all the lower level of the
valley. Cellars were full and there was grave danger of
complete inundation. As it was, there was no way of
getting down to the store and post office, but by the use of
a boat. The valley had three levels and Millford stood
on the second with a high bank at the south running up to
the plain above.

Major Rodgers’ boats were used to cross the flood, and
there were plenty of idle men in Millford to man them,
for the flood had risen above the level of the mill, thereby
stopping its operations and carrying away its warehouse.
The mailman still made his visits from Brandon, though
irregularly because of the high water. When anyone ap-
peared on the high banks of the river a boat was dis-
patched from the store to see what was wanted, and the
beats from Winnipeg still brought supplies to Currie’s
Landing. No one suffered for food.

I remember the flooded creek below our house with
great delight, and all the excitement of seeing the home-
made raft pushed out in the whirling current when
George and Will, with long poles worked their cumber-

102

PICNICS 103

some craft over to the other side, losing much ground in
the crossing, so that they landed some distance down
stream. However, that did not matter. But they had to
pull the raft up on the opposite bank, making due al-
lowance for a rise in the water line, since the creek rose
each night with the melting of the snow. Having crossed
the creek at home, they walked the five miles to Millford,
where a still greater flood had to be crossed, but the row-
boats made this an easier accomplishment; I would have
liked to go with them, but I knew that was a vain hope.
However it was exciting enough to watch for their re-
turn, and to be the first to see them a mile away on the
snow-patched prairie, with their grain bags on their
backs. I was sorry when the current of water in the
creek fell to its normal size, but no doubt the older peo-
ple were relieved.

While we were concerned with the floods, the real
estate boom in Winnipeg which had begun the fall before,
gathered momentum with the coming of spring. Weird
tales of the excitement drifted out to us. We knew that
American, and Eastern Canadian speculators had flocked
into Winnipeg and that money was flowing like the
swollen waters of the Red and Assiniboine. People were
sending money to these men to buy them lots, and the
whole population had caught the fever. Lots sold and
resold, without having been seen or surveyed. It was a
strange and hectic time, when even sensible people were
caught up in the whirlwind of speculation. We heard of
real estate offices opened in livery stables; money kept in
tin pails and baskets, weighed down with horseshoes;
and people making a hundred dollars a day selling lots
that they had never seen. We knew we had made a mis-
take in not buying Louis Prudens’ farm. We could have
sold it all for building lots, and become wealthy, beyond a
doubt. Mother refused to believe that fortunes were
being made so easily, but we believed it, my sister
Hannah and I. Consequently, we spent many happy
times, after we had gone to bed, dressing ourselves in

104 CLEARING IN THE WEST

silk attire, and outfitting riding horses in brocaded velvet
saddles and jewelled bridles, and doing ourselves very
well in the matter of riding-habits. I hada yellow plume
on my black velvet hat that swept the horse’s withers,
but Hannah corrected me on that, by telling me that I
would be facing the wrong way on my horse, if the plume
reached the withers; she said “rump,” was the word I
should use, but I stuck to withers. “Rump,” was a hor-
rible word, applied only to cattle and had nothing to do
with a well-curried horse turned out to carry a lady.
I would sacrifice the plume rather than use it.

About the middle of the summer the boom broke, and
the investors awakened out of their dream. It was a
hard blow to the young country. Every one seemed to
have lost money. The Eastern speculators went back,
angry and disillusioned, blaming the country for their
losses. There is no doubt that this spectacular boom, and
its complete collapse, marked the beginning of the ill
feeling between the East and the West.

We suffered from it, too, in finding that the machine
companies had pushed up their prices, and that immi-
gration had suddenly ceased. However, we still had a
ready market for all our surplus crop; wheat, hay,
potatoes, but we were resentful of the fact, that the West,
through no fault of its own, had been given a black eye!

Our first community effort was the holding of a picnic,
on the first of July that year. I think Frank Burnett was
the originator of the idea. Frank Burnett had been a
stockbroker in Montreal in 1879, but having read Butler’s
“The Great Lone Land,” he began to think of making the
venture of coming West. This intention was strength-
ened by listening to a lecture by Thomas White, of the
Montreal Gazette, (afterwards Sir Thomas White) who
had made the trip in 1878, and written many articles on
it for his paper. So in the same year that we came West,
1880, Frank Burnett, his wife Henrietta, and their two
small children, Nina and Frank junior, made the journey.

PICNICS 105

J have heard them tell the story of their arrival in Win-
nipeg, in March of that year, with a capital of eight-
hundred dollars and a great optimism, born of inex-
perience. They bought an outfit, and started for Prince
Albert. It was a wild undertaking, for Prince Albert
was at least six-hundred miles distant, and with the outfit
they had, they could never have made so long a journey.

Fortunately when they reached Pine Creek, which
was about thirty miles from the junction of the Souris
and the Assiniboine rivers, they heard that my brother
Will, and his friend Macdonald, had lived that winter in
a tent at the Junction getting out logs for a house, and
that they had taken land in a fertile valley. Mr. Burnett
resolved to go and see this country. Leaving his family
at Pine Creek, he pushed on with his pony cart. When
at last he arrived, and saw the country he decided to go
no farther. Here was deep, black loam, excellent
drainage, three running streams, the Souris River, Oak
Creek, and a little creek we afterwards called Spring
Brook. The Tiger Hills formed the southern boundary
of this fertile area, which was thickly studded with timber
for firewood, and there was the additional advantage to
Mr. Burnett of being able to buy logs for a house from
Will and his friend.

The first summer Frank Burnett, and his two brothers
who had come from England, built a double log house,
partitioned by a log wall in the middle, and in it the five
adults (James Burnett had brought his family) and the
six children lived for two years. The women had had
no pioneering experience, and it must have taken all their
resources of courage, and fortitude to endure that first”
terrible winter. :

The Burnett house was about a mile and a half south
west of ours, and like ours was built on the bank of Spring
Brook. Farther south on the creek in 1881, William
Johnston and his wife built a house, and later Robert
Park came and put up a house, and went to Portage la
Prairie in the winter of 1882 and brought back a wife.

106 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Settlement went on apace after 1882, and soon we had,
much to our delight a real neighborhood. The settlers
-were at first all Ontario people, except the Burnetts. Bob
and Charlie Johnston, two young Englishmen came in
1883, and took up a section two miles straight west of our
farm naming their place “Clonskey,” and by that name
it is still known. C. Gardiner Johnston, (Charlie) was
for many years a well known shipbroker in Vancouver.

Frank Burnett, who was a natural leader, began to
talk of a picnic early in the summer of ’82, and he thought
we should hold it at Millford, beside the river. There could
be tables set in the shade of the poplar trees, seats con-
structed and a clearing made, which would make a
permanent picnic ground.

A committee was formed and a program of sports ar-
ranged. There was to be a baseball game, married men
versus single men; a pony race, an ox race, a slow ox
race, and foot races. I was hoping there would be a race
for girls under ten, or that girls might enter with the
boys. But the whole question of girls competing in races
was frowned on. Skirts would fly upward and legs would
show! And it was not nice for little girls, or big ones
either, to show their legs. I wanted to know why, but I
was hushed up. Still, I kept on practising and tried hard
to keep my skirts down asI ran. I could see it was a hard
thing to do. In fact, I could see my dress which was
well below my knees, was an impediment, and when I
took it off I could run more easily. I suggested that I
would wear only my drawers, (we did not know the word
bloomers) I had two new pairs, held firmly on my “waist,”
with four reliable buttons. My suggestion was not well
received. Then I wanted a pair of drawers made like
my dress; for that would look better than white ones with
lace. Lizzie though this a good idea, but mother could not

, be moved. There was a stone wall here that baffled me.
_ Why shouldn’t I run with the boys? Why was it wrong
© for girls’ legs to be seen? I was given to understand that

this was a subject which must not be spoken of.

PICNICS 107

Mother was very concerned about food for the day.
“Don’t I wish I could make half a dozen good juicy pies!”
she said. ‘“There’s nothing a man likes as well as a pie,
but with no fruit, no eggs, no pumpkins, its hard. Still,
I am going to think out something. ... Well, one good
thing anyway, is, there will be no whiskey drinking to
spoil everyone’s fun. We won’t have that trouble for a
while for there’s no whiskey in the country and if every-

one felt as I do, there never would be any. I’ve seen too ~~

many nice times spoiled with it. Drunken men fighting
and swearing in the street, and their women crying and
trying to separate them. It was awful sometimes in
Chatsworth, no fun for anyone, just bad times.”

The picnic day was the loveliest sort of a day; bright
and warm, yet cooled by a gentle wind, and the prairie on
July the first with its sweet brier roses in massed bloom
was a sight to remember. The buds were deep crimson
and the blossoms graded in color from that to pure white,
according to their age. Orange lilies were just beginning
their season, and being scarce were much prized by the
young hunters. The strawberries had been killed with
the frost in June, and having no fruit had sent forth a
great crop of leaves. Saskatoon berries were reddening
on their branches but would not be ready for a couple of
weeks yet, though their unripe state did not keep us from
trying to eat them; but their tastelessness dulled our
enthusiasm.

Down by the river the tables were set, and benches
from the boarding house brought down for seats. There
were raisin-buns and cinnamon rolls, curled like snail
shells, doughnuts, and cookies, (ginger and molasses)
railroad cake; lettuce cut up in sour cream, mustard and
sugar, cold sliced ham, home cured, and mother had made
half a dozen vinegar pies, using her own recipe. The
filling of a pie is rather a delicate matter when you have
no fresh fruit, or eggs, but she made her filling of molasses
and butter, thickened with bread crumbs, and sharpened
and flavored with vinegar and cinnamon. Her one

108 CLEARING IN THE WEST

regret was that she had not the white of an egg to make a
frosting, but we had no hens that year.

The great surprise of the day was the box of oranges
that came from Rapid City, and a great bunch of
bananas just as it came off the tree, held up before us by
John Brown, the storekeeper. There were not enough
to give one to each person, but we all had a piece, and
what a disappointment that first taste of a banana was!
It tasted like white flannel to me. But there were
people there who enjoyed them, and that made me
wonder. Bob Naismith did not like his bit either, but
Mr. Burnett told us bananas were an acquired taste, and
explained what that was: “One grew to like them,” he
said, whereupon Bob and I, with this encouragement made
another assault on the saskatoon berries.

But in the barrel of supplies from Brandon was a
wooden pail of chocolates, bell-shaped, black grocery
chocolates, thinly coated with this new delicious sub-
stance, and filled with white cream candy, which was soft,
but not sticky. Two of these were our portion and having
eaten one, and found it to- be like something one would
dream of, but never taste, I tried to keep my second one
to help me to meet some of life’s vicissitudes. I might be
crossed in love, as the years rolled on, or lose my char-
acter, or my money, and I knew this piece of magic, held
tightly in my hand would comfort me, for one moment
at least, though all the world went wrong. But looking
at my treasure I discovered it was melting and spreading
and oozing out between my fingers. So, to save it I had to
eat it. But I made it last as long as I could; and licked
my fingers so hard I almost took the skin off them, in
pursuit of the last drop of this unbelievable sweetness.

The seats from off the wagons were set around the
place where the baseball game was played. The ball was
a homemade yarn ball, and the bat a barrel stave sharp-
ened at one end, but it was a lovely game, and every one
got runs.

There were enough provisions for supper. So we

PICNICS 109

stayed on and ate again, and were sorry to see the sun
going down in the west. There would be chores to do,
cows to milk, and pigs to feed when we got home, but
no one cared. It was so good to get together. I believe
my special joy in the day was to see my mother so happy.
She had on her brown poplin dress, and because of the
bright sun, wore a wide straw hat instead of her bonnet.
Under the trees, at the table, she took off her hat, and
her pretty brown hair curling over her ears made her
look as young as any of the women. It was so good to
see her talking and laughing, and making light of the
hardships of the long winter. I suppose she was the
oldest woman at the picnic, though she was not yet fifty,
but a new country belongs not to age but to youth, and
mother seemed to advise all the younger women, and
become a mother to all of them in their family cares.

At the supper, the men began to tell why they came to
the Northwest, (Easterners still called it that) and in
almost every case, it was to get land for their boys. One
woman spoke up and said, she wanted to come because
she and her husband had too many relatives in Paisley,
and they couldn’t buy a fanning mill, or a neckyoke, or a
black pot, without the relatives knowing, and they would
be sure to get a “dig” about it from some of them, and she
dare not buy herself a hat, even though it was with the
butter and egg money, for some of Jimmy’s relatives
would say that Jimmy would die in the poorhouse, be-
cause of her extravagance.

Everyone laughed, and there was more fun about
relatives and their inquisitiveness. And I remember one
man said he hoped coppers would never come into use in
Manitoba, for they had been a curse in Ontario. Mr. Hall,
the minister then spoke up and he hoped they wouldn’t
either; they were hard on the churches, but they served
one good purpose, they made it possible for Scotch peo-
ple to be generous. I knew my mother wouldn’t like that,
but she laughed with the others.

Coming home as we did at Jast, in the purple prairie

110 CLEARING IN THE WEST

twilight, we were very tired and happy, with the pleasant
evening sounds around us, drowsy birds softly twittering,
the distant rumble of wagons, dogs barking, cattle lowing,
the western sky still barred with crimson, and bright
edged clouds above us; we were sure that no neigh-
borhood had ever had a happier picnic.

“We have good neighbors, John,’ mother said,
“friendly, jolly people. What a blessing! I thought I'd
never find neighbors like the Lowerys, the Congers, the
Charltons, and the Littles and the Blacks and Carsons,
and Kingsburys, and Hemstocks; but these will be just as
good to live with—and its just as Mr. Hall said, picnics
give us a chance to get acquainted... . It did my heart
good to see Frank Burnett and George Motherwell bite
into the vinegar pie. Im another year we'll have hens
and I’ll make some Jemon pies that will melt in their
mouths. Step up the oxen, George, the sun is down, and
*twill be nearly dark before we are home, and the cows
will be at the bars, wondering where everyone is.”

Then the conversation turned to Mrs. Dack, the woman
who came west because of her numerous relatives.
Mother though it was a queer way for her to talk of her
relatives, and maybe she was extravagant, too, certainly
her hat with its plumes looked very dressy. ... Any-
way it would have been better for her to let Mr. Dack do

‘ _the talking, when there were so many strange men

~

© present.

I couldn’t see why, but I knew enough not to say so.

The next year, 1883, we had a picnic in the same place,
and we had a horse race that year; for the settlers had
added horses to their equipment. Our boys wanted to
run Kate, the smarter one of the team we had just bought,
but mother was against it. ‘‘A work horse isn’t cut out
for racing,” she said, “and you have no saddle to ride
her. Just let her stay where she is, I never saw any good

‘ come of horse-racing, anyway.” There was a brass band

PICNICS 111

from Brandon that year, and ever so many more people,
Oak Creek people and some from Brandon Hills.

Mrs. Frank Burnett’s sister had come from Montreal
and her city clothes and colored parasol gave a real im-
petus to dress styles among us. Her picnic dress was of
factory cotton, trimmed with knife pleating, and her hat,
a red straw turban. She was tall and graceful, and looked
like a picture in Godey’s Lady Book.

Having experienced how lovely a picnic can be, we
came to this one, with great expectations. Some of the
print (white ground with blue and yellow dots) brought
from Chatsworth, was made into dresses for Hannah and
me by Lizzie’s skilful hands; I can see them yet, and smell
their pleasant starchy smell. They were made with a
tight “body” buttoned down to the waist behind, and a
full skirt. The plainness of the “body’’ was relieved by
a graduated frill which ran over the shoulders, wide at
the top and tapering to nothing at the waist, and referred
to as “wings.”

The band from Brandon, with their great brass instru-
ments, drove into the picnic grounds in their big demo-
crat, with red rosettes on their horses’ collars, and when
they alighted, coming swiftly down over the wheels, we
were pleased to see how young they were. It was just a
boys’ Band that had come to play for us. Nice, fair-
faced hungry boys, who came over to the tables de-
claring they had been thinking of this meal all the way
from Brandon.

They played: “Rule Britannia,” “The Maple Leaf,”
and “God Save the Queen,” in a perfect torrent that shook
the ground. I had never heard a brass band before and
it affected me powerfully. It seemed to change every-
thing while its billows passed over me. The bandsmen
went up the hill to the ballground, where the races were
to be held, and we ran after them determined not to miss
a sight or sound of these young magicians. Even the
distribution of oranges, bananas and chocolates did not

112 CLEARING IN THE WEST

alter the focus of my mind. Though I did eat my banana,
a whole one this time, the taste had not yet come.

The women were having their visit down at the tables.
The baseball game went over noisily, and the horse race
was not nice to watch for one horse was ridden by a real
jockey in a red cap, and he beat his horse from one end
of the half mile to the other, with a short black-snake
whip, and I was glad he did not win.

In the slow ox race, our black and white Jake was
entered, and I was glad no one would beat him; for one
rule of that race was there would be no whips or switches.
Each man would ride his neighbor’s ox, and endeavor by
words of entreaty or hand slaps to get the ox to move
as fast as possible. Some one could run behind the ox
and push him or slap him, and some one could go ahead
with a pan of oats to coax him. The slowest ox would
win the race, and the prize was a box of raisins from
Read & Callendar’s store; and as our Jake had won the
race the year before, we were hoping he might again.
Jake was a placid little ox, very gentle and knowing.
He could push open a door with his nose, and although
he was never seen hooking any animals in the farm yard,
he was recognized as the boss of them all. He was oddly
marked with a black back and white sides, the black part
making almost a perfect blanket. His face was white
with two black eyes, giving him a rakish look. He had
been washed for the occasion and was received with ap-
plause when he was led out to the road where the race
would take place. Jimmy Sloan, who worked for one of
the neighbors would ride Jake.

Just then the women came up the hill, Mrs. Dale
wheeling her baby in the carriage. We had been watch-
ing the baseball game, but I ran over to Mrs. Dale’s car-
riage to see if I could wheel the baby. Being the youngest
of my family I had never had the care of a baby, so it
was a treat to me to wheel a carriage. Mrs. Dale gladly
relinquished the baby, and I kept the carriage moving as
I watched the slow ox race forming at the far end of the

PICNICS 113

field. Little Jake took his place with the other four oxen.
And the word was given!

The race began, and the fun was on. In spite of
entreaties Jake kept his pace. He merely shook his ears,
but refused to quicken his steps. The people cheered and
shouted, and three of the oxen began to trot, Jimmy Sloan
waved his straw hat, from side to side, ki-yi-ing like a
coyote to frighten his mount.

Suddenly, I saw Jake dart forward with a bellow of
pain—he began to gallop like a wild thing, and threw his
rider in his frantic lurchings. He was coming straight
for the end of the field, still bellowing—-A horrified silence
fell on the people. What did it mean? Had he gone
crazy? He was making straight for the shelter of the
trees, where I stood with the baby carriage. ... My
heart turned cold with terror! Some one was scream-
ing! He changed his course a few feet from me, and
crashed into the brush! As he passed I saw that his
white side ran with blood!

The picnic broke into an uproar. Jimmy Sloan had
used spurs! The race was spoiled—All the fun had gone
out of it. Then the truth came out. Jimmy Sloan had
been drinking. He would never have done this if he had
been himself; there wasn’t a better boy in the country
than Jimmy Sloan.

I couldn’t walk; my knees had gone weak, and my
memory of the picnic is confused from that point. I
know Mrs. Dale came running and her face was white
and sick looking. There was great indignation, high
voices and excitement. Who had brought liquor to our
picnic?

There was to be a dance that night in the boarding
house, and the Band was supplying the music. Lizzie
and George and Will were going to stay, but I think only
Will stayed. The whole temper of the day was spoiled.
Jimmy Sloan was not hurt when he fell. I heard some
one say something about a drunk man’s luck. But the

114 CLEARING IN THE WEST

picnic had gone raw and sour, and broke up in disorder,
suspicions and accusations.

That night behind the boarding house there was a
“stand up and drag out fight,” between the Canadians
and the English, for the Band boys had brought a supply
of liquor from Brandon, and every old grudge, under its
influence came to the surface. One man had traded off
& spavined horse to an Englishman, who had believed the
horse to be sound. Another Englishman had jumped a
Canadian’s claim, when the owner had gone to Winnipeg.
Every old grievance became suddenly inflamed, and there
were heads smashed, noses broken, and at least one
chewed ear. There might have been more serious hap-
penings but for the intervention of Frank Burnett.

_.We had no picnic the next year.

~ That was my first direct contact with the liquor busi-
hess and coming so early in life, it left a mark. The
maddened ox, blind with pain, coming bellowing toward
me and the baby asleep in her carriage—that was my
nightmare for many years and still holds an allegory
which has not lost its meaning as the years go by. I
know there is a pleasant aspect of this matter of drink-
ing, and when many people think of it they see the sun-
kissed vinyards, where the grapes hang purple and
luscious, and the happy people sing glorious songs of
praise, for the wine that cheers their labors, and warms
their veins. Some think of how it loosens the tongue and
drives out self-consciousness, and makes for good fellow-
ship when people meet. I think of none of these things.
I remember a good day spoiled; peaceful neighbors sud-
denly growing quarrelsome, and feel again a helpless

blinding fear, and see blood dyeing the side of a dumb
beast.

—_

CHAPTER XV
THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR

THE prairie summers were delightful. <—-

The cool dewy mornings with a sunshine clear as
cellophane; languorous afternoons with heat waves
quivering the skyline, every blade of grain and grass
growing and every bird singing; clamorous evenings with
the cows coming home and the teams coming in from the
fields, waggons rumbling and ‘dogs barking, dishes clat-
tering; Hight of day dulling down into the long purple
twilight, and the short swift night so soon streaked with
dawn.

The prairie was never stingy with its flowers, from
the furry-nosed blue anenomes that pushed the snow
aside in early April to the wealth of golden rod and
purple sage, and blue fringed gentians that embroidered
the headlands in the fall. Between these, bloomed butter-
cups, marsh marigolds, trilliums, wild vetches, wild roses,
tiger lilies, lady’s slippers—yellow as June butter and
sweet as honey, and if you knew where to look for them
you could find the purple blooms of great size and of
orchid-like beauty. In some places these were sold at the
stations to the travellers on the trains.

The peak of the year came in harvest time when the
ripening grain made golden squares and bands on the
prairie, and blue haze shrouded the horizons, and the
dewy nights distilled all the fragrances of the fields. I
loved to listen to the sibilant whispering of the ripening
grain billowing and dappling in the wind, and to watch
the dark blue flowing shadows cast by drifting clouds.
From the time the grain began to turn to gold in early
August until the stooks polka-dotted the fields, the whole

115

116 CLEARING IN THE WEST

countryside throbbed with color and movement and
sound.

There was a great pride in my heart, when I saw the

+ cultivation of our farm increasing year by year. We had
“taken fields of grass and turned them into fields of grain.
~~ We had brought the seed and soil together.

I had walked proudly behind my father, in the clean
new furrows in my bare feet, as he broke the new sod on
our farm, and as the coulter cut the sod, and the share
turned it over, I knew he was doing something more than
just plowing a field. I knew there was a significance in
what he was doing, though I had no words to express it.
I knew this was what the land had been waiting for all
these long years. It was for this that the rain had fallen
on it in summer and the snows had covered it in winter.
It was for this the grass had grown on it, withered, and
grown again, that some day someone would come and
claim it, not for himself alone but for all people, claim

-~it in the name of humanity and press it into humanity’s
service, stamping and sealing it forever with the broad
signature of the plow.

But there was a shadow on my happiness too. From
the time the grain was high enough to be eaten by the
cattle, someone had to keep them out of the fields for we
had no fences at this time. Before the school started, I
was very glad to be the herder. It was much nicer to
sit outside with good young Nap beside me, than stay
around the house, where there were always dishes coming
up to be washed. But when I started to school and got a
taste of learning, and swept through the Second Part and
the Second Book and arrived in the Third Book, and was
able to stand by Annie Adams in her blue cashmere dress
and brass buttons, her hair ribbons and covered slate
frame, all in the first year, how was I going to survive, if
I had to stay at home and keep the cows out of the grain?
But someone had to do it.

Hannah was a wizard at learning, and in two years
was by far the best student in the school, and would soon

THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 117

be able to write for her second class certificate; she must
not be held back. I knew that, I knew too, that when she
got through and was able to teach, she would help me.
I was very proud of Hannah, as we all were, Mr. Schultz
had said she was the best student he ever had.

But when in the morning, I saw Bert Ingram and
Hannah walking up the trail on their way to school, when
I set out across the creek driving the cows ahead of me to
the pasture, on the School section, the darkness of the
pit was in my soul. I had a little brown arithmetic with
me, a slate and pencil and I would lie on my stomach on
some green knoll, and work long division problems and
Hannah would mark them for me at night, and tell me
what had happened all day, but that did not dry my tears.

I had a great friend and advocate in my sister Lizzie
who freely gave her opinion that a pasture should be
fenced for the cows, so I could be able to go to school.
This was done at last; a fine big grassy field was fenced
in along the creek, and I enjoyed a brief season of free-
dom, but unfortunately a dry season came that year,
stunting the grass, and the cattle had to be driven to new
places, to supplement the pasture, and again I had to be
the herder.

No one prayed more earnestly for rain that I did, in
those stifling hot days, when an insolent sun came up in
a cloudless sky, and glared down on us all day, as it rode
the heavens in sublime indifference to our needs. I wore
boots without stockings, a print dress and a straw hat, a
home-made straw hat, (Mrs. Naismith had shown us how
to make the braid with seven strands of oat straw) and
mine was really a small umbrella in width, held fast
under my chin with elastic, making a fine circle of shade
around me.

There were times when I hated the cows and could
have drowned them gladly, for I felt that they were
cheating me of the one thing I most wanted. My work
was all so endless; only at night, when they all lay asleep
behind the pasture bars, was I free, and what good did

118 CLEARING IN THE WEST

that do me? They held me a prisoner as truly as any
one was ever held by prison walls and I could see life
passing by me. There could be no release until the harvest
was gathered and threshed and the fields were free then
to all comers. But looking ahead that far seemed an
eternity.

A heavier blow fell on me too that summer. I had
taken the cows out to the east end of the School-section
and let them join the neighbor’s herd. The School-section
(No. 29) was vacant land and I could have left them
there, but for the danger of their sneaking back to our
oat field into which they had once bolted when I was
bringing them home. Having tasted the young oats, they
were not likely to forget. Cattle never forget anything.
So I had to stay.

I was busy reading Collier’s History, with Nap beside
me lazily snapping at flies. The sky was cloudy, with a
promise of rain, in the northwest, where thick dark
clouds were piled on the horizon. Rain would save the
country, if it came now, for the grain was in the shot-
blade but with the intense heat, was yellowing. Rain
would bring up the pasture too, and ease the mental strain
from which everyone was suffering. My people were
getting edgy, and cross, with this sorry business of wait-
ing and hoping and being daily disappointed. To-day, I
had been glad to get out and away by myself, and as I
sat on a knoll, reading about King John and the barons,
I wondered about the common people of that time, and
what they were doing and thinking while King John and
his nobles battled at Runnymede. Maybe they did not
know anything about it, nor cared; perhaps, that was the
fate of common people, to go on raising crops, doing all
the drudgery, paying taxes, fighting when they were
called out and, always letting some one else decide big
questions.

Mr. Schultz had said something like this one day,
when we were having a history lesson and he told us
about the Peasant’s Revolt in Germany and how one-

THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 119

hundred-and-fifty thousand of them were slaughtered, by
advice of Martin Luther, because they dared to ask for
certain simple privileges, like leaving the farm on which
they were born. Hannah and I didn’t mention this at
home, for we knew Martin Luther was the father of
Protestantism and so somewhat of a god. I was sorry
to hear this about Martin Luther. I had thought better
of him.

The fires of rebellion in my heart were fanned by
the agitation going on now about the railways, and the
men at Ottawa giving away our railway rights without
consulting the people of Manitoba. Frank Burnett, who
lived near us had been over talking to my brother Will,
and telling him the farmers must organize to strengthen
Premier Norquay’s hand, or we would be no better than
the serfs of Russia, moved about like pawns. I didn’t
know what pawns were but I got the drift of the argu-
ment. I knew the Government at Ottawa had promised
the Canadian Pacific Railway Company that no other
railway would be allowed to come into Canada for twenty
years. American companies were ready to come, but they
could not get permission. We wanted them, and needed
them. It was our country! We were doing the work,
but we were powerless! We were the common people!
I grew indignant as I read the history and saw how
little the people ever counted, and longed for the time
when I would be old enough to say something.

But my business at the moment was to acquire
knowledge. Knowledge unlocked doors and gave liberty.
I had to plug at these books, snatch every minute I could,
and let nothing divert me. Hannah would soon have her
certificate; she would get a school and earn money to hire
a herd boy and set me free. Perhaps I could go to
Brandon and work for my board and go to the High
School there, when I was ready.

Mr. Schultz had come to see me, the night before, and
had praised my work. My heart was still light as I re-
called his wonderful words. “Nellie,” he said, “no one

&

120 CLEARING IN THE WEST

can hold you back—no condition can defeat you-—if you
keep your health; remember no one can really hurt you,
but yourself.” I turned that over in my mind, not quite
sure of its meaning.

I may have been so absorbed in my own thoughts that
I did not notice that Nap had left me. The cows were
contentedly grazing in the lowlands by the creek, where
wild pea-vine and goose-grass mixed with the prairie
hay, afforded them excellent pasture.

I was roused by dogs barking, and a sudden stampede
of the cows; instinctively I ran toward them calling for
Nap. Then I saw that two dogs, Nap and old Jack, the
terror of the neighborhood were running the cows toward
the creek, with the whole herd in confusion and panic.
One of the young heifers was bellowing with pain and
fright, as the big black dog hung to her tail. I cried and
called, racing with all my speed. The thing I dreaded
was happening! The black dog, belonging to one of our
neighbors had sneaked up on the cows and Nap had
joined him, in his bad work. Tail biting was the un-
forgivable sin in a dog! Two of our heifers were carry-
ing short tails now and Nap had been the cause. He
would be shot if it happened again, and it was happening!
He wouldn’t have done it if this black brute had not
started the chase... . I must reach him ... make him
hear me, before his teeth closed .... oh! if some of the
cattle would only turn on him, he would come to his
senses—I reached him at last, and flung my book at him,
but not before he had swung for one horrible moment on
the big cow’s tail. He fell back when at last he heard
me, and came crawling to me, abject in his misery. He
knew as well as I did what he had done.

The cattle had crossed the creek, and surged up the
opposite bank, taking refuge in the trees and stood there
panting and terrified. The black dog had disappeared.
I went among them trying to quiet them. The neighbor’s
cattle had separated from ours when the attack began,

THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 121

running toward their home and I did not know whether
any of them had been bitten or not.

I could have killed Nap, I think, in that moment,
when I saw the damage he had done to the big cow. A
beautiful two-year-old heifer was the other victim and
her tail was badly torn by the fangs of the black dog and
she was in such a state of fear that I could not get near
her. The big cow let me wash her tail in a water hole
below the hill, and I tore the frill off my petticoat for a
bandage, but I could do nothing for the heifer, who still
raced and bawled with pain.

Then I proceeded to deal with Nap, who had come
back to me. But how could I go on thrashing him, when
he lay at my feet and took my blows? I dropped the
poplar stick, sick at heart; why should I inflict pain on a
dog, who would pay for his one crazy moment with his
life? No one could beat a dog who was going to be
shot; who might not see another sunrise.

I flung myself down beside him in an agony of grief,
and thought my heart would break with its load. I was
sorry for the wounded animals and I was sorry for Nap;
and sorry for myself, and it seemed that my little world
had come to a sudden and tragic end.

The cows gathered around me in excitement; it’s a
wonder some of them did not step on me, but I didn’t
care, if they had, nothing could hurt me any further. I
had gone beyond hurting. When my grief had spent
itself, I sat up and looked around me. The cows had
drawn back, and stood in a circle looking at me. Nap
huddled against me, with his ears flat against his head,
and his eyes on the ground—the picture of guilt. He
tried to lick my hand, but his bloody jaws were terrible
to see. I took him down to the creek and washed him
carefully, leaving no outward trace of his misdeeds on
his coat. He was lamb-like in his gentleness; even
whimpered a little to try to get a kind word from me.
But I steeled myself against him.

There was a bachelor neighbor who lived near, where

122 CLEARING IN THE WEST

we were then and I decided to go over and get some salve
from him. I knew I could get my hands on the heifer
when she quieted down, and perhaps her tail could be
saved. ... Nap walked along behind me, and came into
the little house at my heels. Jack Thinn was out, but his
house was not locked, of course, and I found the very
thing I wanted, a little jar of balm o’ Gilead salve, the
kind my mother always kept on hand. I hunted for a
clean rag, but all I could find was Jack’s white shirt and
I knew that was sacred for funerals and the Twelfth of
July, but I did find strings which would help me to fasten
the bandages.

I left a note, Jack’s pen and pad were on the stove,
telling him I would bring the salve back. When I came
back with the salve Jack was home; he had been making
hay on the river flats, and he had the kettle on the fire,
to make a cup of tea, and asked me to drink a cup with
him, but I had to get back to the cows.

“That black brute should have been shot two years
ago,” he said, when I told him what had happened. “He
took the tails off two year-old calves this spring. Now
any dog that will run a calf is not a dog at all—he’s a
low bred cur. They keep him because he can kill wolves,
and they get the bounty, but I hope your dad insists on
him being shot this time. He’s an old brute anyway,
and has done his mead of evil.”

Not once did it occur to him that Nap might have had
a share in the bad work, and a plan came to me....
though I knew it was not the way of truth. No one had
seen the dogs—no one knew... . I might be able to save
Nap.

Jack was talking still.

“Drink a cup of tea, Nellie, you look like a ghost, just
look at yourself in the glass!”

That was not easy, too many flies had been there ahead
of me, but I could see my face was blood stained and dirty.
“Better wash your face before your mother sees you—or

THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 123

you'll give her a fright... . I can see the cows from here—
they’re all right.”

I think he saw I had been crying, and being too much
of a gentleman to embarrass me by noticing it, he became
highly jocular. ‘Gosh, Nellie, you look as if you had
been in a fight ... are you sure you didn’t bite the cows?
I knew you were pretty mad about having to stay home
and mind them, but I never thought you’d break right out
and bite them like this, and blame it on the old black dog.”

I didn’t see much fun in Jack’s railery, but I knew the
kind motive back of it, so I washed my hands and face,
and drank a cup of tea gratefully.

He offered to help me with the cows, but I knew I
could manage them more easily alone. When I got back
to them I found some of them were lying down, and some
were cropping the grass.

My mind was in a turmoil. I wondered if I could
save Nap. He would never have chased the cows, if left
alone. The death of the old black dog would be a good
thing! A dog that would chase yearling calves had no
license to live. ...

I tried to straighten out all the strands of evidence.
But could not be sure. A lie was a lie, no matter how
justifiable it seemed and there was a knot in the skein,
of my reasoning, which would break the thread sometime.

There was no other way. ... I would have to lie to
save him. I could not expect mercy for him, if the truth
were known. Bob-tailed cattle would not sell for as much
as animals with their tails; and the poor brutes surely
needed the full length of tail to whisk away the flies. ...

I knew it would be a great grief to my father too, to
have Nap shot for he loved every animal on the place.
Of course, if he had seen Nap with his teeth in the big
cow’s tail and heard her bellow with pain, he could have
shot the dog himself, but for that matter so could I, at
that moment. Mother would take the practical view, and
set aside her feelings. The dog was a danger to the

124 CLEARING IN THE WEST

cows—so the dog must go, no matter how fine he was in
other ways, and that would end the matter.

The cows walked ahead of us quietly and I had plenty
of time to think my own bitter thoughts. Even the sky
was unfriendly now. Not a cloud remained of all the
thick dark ones that had been piling up over the Brandon
Hills promising rain. Another dry day with shrinking
ponds and withering crops, would not improve tempers,
that had been pretty brittle when I left in the morning.
So there was all the more reason for careful talk on my
part to prevent a flare-up.

I would have to lie, clean and straight. There was
no other way, and I wouldn’t tell a soul... .I did want to
tell Lizzie; she would have been so sorry. I wouldn’t put
any share of this load on her or anyone else. I’d have the
decency anyway to keep it to myself. I would do my own
lying. ...

The cows stopped to graze on a little low spot that
was still green, so I did not hurry them. The big cow was
eating now, but the heifer paced restlessly through the
others, bawling and switching her tail. I rubbed her head
and talked to her, trying to soothe her, but her big soft
eyes were still full of terror. I suppose it was the
first pain she had ever felt, and she didn’t know how to
bear it.—Strangely enough none of the cattle were one
bit afraid of Nap. I don’t believe even the big cow knew
that the crazy barking fury, with teeth of fire, that had
hurled itself on her was any relation to the friendly
furry friend who went in and out among them every day.

All the family was at home, when I drove the cattle
into the pasture and put up the bars. I told my story and
it was believed. My father declared he would go over to
our neighbors the next day and ask that the black dog be
put out of the way.

It was my brother Jack who pointed out the weak
spot in the case.

“They'll say the dog was at home all day. They prob-
ably think he was, and every one knows Nap has bitten

THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR 125

tails too, and what’s to stop them saying it was Nap that
did the damage. No one saw it but Nellie and they know
she’s so crazy about Nap, she might lie to save him.”

“Now that’s enough!” mother interrupted. “There
isn’t a person in this neighborhood that wouldn’t take
Nellie’s word.”

I thought I would choke with humiliation and shame.
Fortunately, it was dusk in the kitchen, so they couldn’t
see my face, but I was afraid they would hear my heart
beating.

“Poor child, it has been a hard day for you,’”’ mother
went on, “you did well Nellie to get the salve from Jack
Thinn, I must give him some more—I am glad I made
plenty in the spring when the buds were on. I don’t
know anything else we can do—I think you can compel
them to shoot the black dog, John. Isn’t it queer that he
never goes for any of their own cattle? They keep him
because he’s a wolf killer. I would hate to quarrel with
a neighbor .... but what can we do?”

Father did not go at once to deliver the ultimatum in
regard to the dog. He kept putting it off, for he could
never do a disagreeable thing. ‘Maybe the tails will
heal up,” he said hopefully, when mother declared she
would go herself, if he didn’t.

I was utterly miserable; made more so by the fact
that my story was not doubted. I had had a good name,
and had thrown it away.

Nap was blithely indifferent. He even went away
to my brother Will’s place and stayed for days, leaving
me alone to take the cattle out, and that hurt me. Here
was I, blackening my soul for him, and a lot he cared! I '
suppose he felt a sort of dog-remorse for what he had
done and felt easier in his mind when he was out of my
sight.

CHAPTER XVI
MEN, AND MACHINES

THE rain saved me, at least for the present, for the next
day, all the deceptive clouds that had marched across the
sky withholding their rain, came back apologetically and
gave us full measure. For three glorious days, without
wind or lightning, a steady rain fell in silver spears
straight into the ground and the withering crop lifted its
head and revived. Indeed it made a wonderful recovery
for when the rain was over, there came a strong ground
heat that lifted the plants, filled the heads and began the
process of ripening.

The whole temper of the neighborhood changed, and
my troubles seemed to have had a happy deliverance.

Even the two wounded cows were more contented and
were now on the way to recovery. The gashes had closed
over, and the heat had gone out of them. I wondered if
I could escape as easily as this, and if my prayers could
all be answered in this magnificent way. It seemed very
generous of God, it it were true. But I had my uneasy
moments. There was a stern Puritanic part of my consci-
ence that told me I had sinned and I would suffer. ‘“With-
out the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins!”
Had not that been the golden text, the very Sunday after?
What did it mean? But the excitement of the coming
harvest, seemingly secure now, drove away my gloom;
and a great event was about to break, in the effulgence of
which, all other considerations paled.. We were going
to get a binder.

After the rains, an agent canvassed our neighbor-
hood, a sleek brown-whiskered fellow who drove a brown
team, in a top buggy; and came first to see us for he was
an Owen Sound man. The Company was offering a

126

MEN, AND MACHINES 127

special concession to any neighborhood that would buy
six binders. An expert would come and set them running,
and repairs would be left with the blacksmith in Millford.
Three-hundred-and-forty dollars was the price, and the
payment would be spread over three years. ...

We had an old reaper, bought secondhand and with
it we had cut the two former crops, but it was
inadequate for the eighty acres of wheat, that lay
across the creek, turning yellow now and dimpling in the
gentle wind. The land was clean and strong, and not a
weed broke the symmetry of the even heads. .

I never saw my father happier. “You brought us to}
a bright land, Willie,” he said with emotion, one night
as he looked at the ripening grain. ‘After grubbing
and hoeing and picking stones and pulling weeds—that
field brings tears to my eyes. This crop will give us a
footing, please God!” ,

It was in this state of reverent expectation that the
machinery agent broke in and the binder was bought, and
the great day came, when it was drawn from Brandon.
The neighbors went up together and six binders came in
a procession, great red and white machines with carriers
of white canvas.

That very night, Billy, one of our horses (we had just
one team) became sick, and that threw a cloud over the
rejoicing. But we made light of this to each other. Billy
would be better in time to do his share on the binder; we
had arranged to hire a horse from one of the neighbors,
and in another year, if this crop came off, as it looked
now—we would have another team. We had a good yoke
of oxen, fine big blood-red ones~--a perfect match.

But Billy’s sickness went on, and developed into a
low fever, which held him to his stall for six weeks, and
that was how we had to hitch Kate with the oxen. Our
neighbor’s horse met with an accident before we started
cutting by getting caught in the barb wire of the pasture
fence, so the first day of the cutting was robbed of part of
its glory. But, with a fine day of cloudless sky, velvety

128 CLEARING IN THE WEST

air, sweet with the rich scents of ripe grain, bergamont
and golden rod, we refused to be cast down. Kate was
hitched beside the oxen and although she gave every
evidence of hating her work-mates, the binder was put
into action; the wheels turned, the knives bit greedily
into the yellow stalks, the canvas carried them aloft;
they fell into the bundles and were tied by the binding
twine and dropped on the stubble. Will drove the binder
and the sheaves were set into stooks by Jack and Father.
George was working for a neighbor.

The first round was accomplished with difficulty for
Kate could not accustom her pace to the slow steps of the
oxen, and could not refrain from nipping them. But this
was remedied by checking her head up, so she could not
reach them. The second round was better, but the third
round the knotter broke—a casting was faulty and snap-
ped off—and each sheaf was thrown down loose, and a
piece of idle twine with it... .

Father wanted to go on, he would bind the sheaves the
old way, anything was better than to let the grain stand,
for it was dead ripe and every minute was precious, but
Will thought it would be better to go to Millford and get a
new knotter. The agent said there would be “parts”
kept there and it would save time in the end.

In Millford, he found there were no knotters, so he
had to push on to Brandon, thirty miles away, and could
not get back until the next morning. So the first day was
lost.

Kate made the trip to Brandon, gallant Kate, with
her ears back and her head up. She was a quick traveller
and evidently never tired. With a couple of hours rest,
after coming back from Brandon she went on the binder
again, leaning over to take a bite at the ox nearest to her,
to let him know that, though she might be a little tired
with the long hours, she still had her pride. I do not
know how many times Kate was driven to Brandon
through the night that harvest, but I do know that she
showed no sign of weariness at any time.

MEN, AND MACHINES 129

The story of that binder is a story of grief and the .
other binders were no better. Everything went wrong,
someone was on the road to Brandon nearly every night
for the parts left with the blacksmith were not sufficient
for the demand. The costs were mounting too, for the
Company disclaimed all responsibility for breakages.

In fact the Company from its office in Winnipeg as-
sumed no responsibility at all, for anything. Their work
was done, when they got the notes signed. But they did
write letters. My face burns as I write these words,
thinking of the insults they hurled at us.

I remember one lovely day early in September when
at last it seemed that we had replaced every part on the
binder that could possibly break, and all day it had been
working well. Hannah and I carried out the afternoon
lunch as usual. The big pot of tea, hot buttered biscuits,
and on this day we had a fine cranberry pie (with the
pits in) just out of the oven, juicy and sweet.

The binder was working so well every one was hold-
ing their breath, and almost talking in whispers. I think
it was the first whole day the binder had worked and the
night was not yet!

We like to carry out the lunch for everyone was glad
to see us. Even Kate was glad for it gave her a half
hour release from her despised companions, while she
ate her green oats in peace. There was no comment made
on the binder’s fine performance. Irish people are super-
stitious about talk; it can breed mischief. “If you are
doing well, say nothing.” ....

We laid out the meal almost in silence. “It looks like
the end of the field to-night,’ Jack said, as he wiped his
hands on his overalls. “It’s full moon and that means we
can work a little longer. If we can see till half past eight,
I believe we’ll be done.”

My father was sixty-nine at this time, but he was
strong and well, and worked as long hours as the boys.
He had a great love for the fields, and in harvest time, it

130 CLEARING IN THE WEST

seemed he was never tired. He was busy now rubbing
out a head of wheat.

“Sure, and it is a grand country that can grow forty
bushels of this to the acre. Look at how plump it is and
hard, and yellow, packed in its little case, neat as a baby’s
fingernail... . It’s great to be alive on a day like this,
with enough to eat, and a bed to lie on. If it were not
for this touch of rheumatism in my knees, I believe I could
work all day and all night too, at as nice a job as standing
sheaves on end for the sun to shine on... . Rest yourself,
Willie lad. ... There’s always another day, and it will be
a good one by the look of the sky... .”

“There’s always the danger of frost,” Will said, as
he ate hastily. The trouble with the binder had put lines
in his young face.

Hannah and I waited until the binder started. We
would carry the sheaves for father for a while to save
him the stooping, and as we worked he told us stories
of Ireland. He was talking of the Rock of Cashel that
lies on the plains of Tipperary, ‘ ‘The Divil’s Bite’ it is
called,” he said, “and that’s what it is. The Devil had
come to Ireland to make trouble but the blessed Saint
Patrick was there ahead of him and he could do nothing
with the Irish at all, at all, and he saw he might as well
go home to England. But before he went, such a rage
came on him, he took a bite out of the hill for spite and
made off with it. But he had bitten off more than he in-
tended, and to hold it was pulling his back teeth out, so
he dropped it just where it lies on the green plains of
Tipperary, and up above, you can see the place it came
from.”

Suddenly the hum of the binder ceased! and we
waited in suspense. Had something gone wrong? We
hurried around the end of the field and saw to our dis-
may that Will was unhitching.

The tongue of the binder had snapped. There was
no reason for the break, for no extra pressure had been
put on it. There was an old crack in the wood, smoothed

MEN, AND MACHINES 131

down and painted over, but there it was! Anyone would
know it would break sometime. ... Jack ran to the house
to get two boards; maybe it could be mended to get the
field finished. Will stood looking at it without saying a
word. He whistled through his teeth as if he were cool-
ing his lips. Father looked at the break and broke into a
wild Irish denunciation of the Company, checking himself
in the middle of it to pat Will on the shoulder and say:
“take it aisy, lad.”

Someone was coming across the field. It was Jack
Thinn bringing the mail. “Trouble again,” he called
across the stubble, “one of the axles of mine broke—we
worked only two days this week and my grain is shelling.
Tom Aylsby has gone to Brandon for a new wheel. I
brought over the mail. I see the Company has written
you a letter, Mr. Mooney. Nice letter writers aren’t
they?”

Will opened the !etter and read, I remember this
sentence: “Every part of our machines is tested by ex-
perts, but no machine can do good work in the hands of a
bungling operator, and unfortunately we cannot supply
brains, our business is machinery.”

That night the sun set clear and cold, and at dawn
the next morning came the frost that caught the standing
grain.

Two years afterwards when at the Harvest Home
Festival in Militord, one of the professors from the new
college just opened in Winnipeg, came out to preach on
Sunday and to lecture for us on Monday night and in the
little church there were gathered all the people of our
community. The Reverend Doctor, with his great gifts
of oratory, had warmed our hearts and many an eye
glistened as he dwelt on the opportunities of higher edu-
cation that the new college made possible for the boys
and girls of to-day.

“The best crop in this fertile valley, so favored in its
rich soil and abundant rain-fall is not your number-one-
hard wheat, or your seventy-bushels-to-the-acre oats, or

~

132 CLEARING IN THE WEST

your white-faced Herefords, it is your boys and girls
with their bright faces and eager minds. ... You came

here from your comfortable homes in the East for their

sakes, not your own, and now, dear friends as the Lord
has prospered you, we know we can depend on you for
support in this great new enterprise.”

The people were nodding their consent and the doctor
knew he had his audience.

“I am glad to be able to tell you that we have received
heartening messages from people outside our own Pro-
vince, especially from Eastern sources. And you will be
interested to hear that one of the first subscriptions and
a@ generous one too, came from the Machine Co., of
Toronto, whose name I see on many of your machines.”

Oh! oh. ...!

There was an intake of breath in the church, and the
atmosphere curdled and soured like new milk in a thunder
storm. The people squirmed in their seats and their
faces changed. Inadvertently the kindly old doctor had
run his hand across old wounds that bled again;——I re-
membered the letters. ... “We cannot supply brains, our
business is machinery.”

Coming home in the wagon we discussed it. Liza,
(Mrs. Ingram’s Liza, brought from Woodstock) who hap-
pened to be riding with us gave us her description of
what had happened in the church. Liza was the best
berry-picker in the neighorhood and could find berries
where the ordinary person saw nothing but leaves, so
Liza drew her illustrations from her own sphere of
activity :

“That church was like a berry-bush,” she said, and
everyone hushed to hear what was on Liza’s mind for
she seldom spoke at all. “A berry patch with raspberries
hanging bigger’n thimbles everyone pickin’ and eatin’!
Nicest berries they ever saw. Then at the same minute,
everyone, not one or two mind you, but everyone bit into
a raspberry bug!”

Before I leave this part of my story, I want to pay

MEN, AND MACHINES 133

my tribute to Kate, the horse who worked beside the two
red oxen with such contempt for her humble helpers.
Her bones lie deep in the soil of the farm she helped to
make in the Souris valley, but her memory will endure
as long as any of our family are in the land of re-
membering.

Billy and Kate were our first horses, bought from
Arthur Robinson, Mr. Schultz’s brother-in-law, who lived
near Hilton in the Tiger hills. Billy recovered from his
long sickness and lived to be a very old horse, a patient
cheerful steady horse, whom anyone could drive, but Kate
was the real personality. Not that she was a likable
horse; for she was never in good humor, and lived in a
state of continual ill-temper, with her ears laid back on
her head. But she was a horse of iron nerve and will.
My father explained her bad temper by saying she
couldn’t help it. She must have been teased when she
was a colt.

She was never tired, and never sick a day in her life.
She lived to be twenty-five years old, and for the last few
years had to have her food chopped, for her teeth were
gone. But not her high temper! The colts in the pasture
never made the second mistake of being familiar with her
for she lost no opportunity of taking a nip out of any
horse that came near her, except Billy her mate, for
whom she had a real affection. I can remember how they
stood with their necks crossed in the pasture.

Billy died first, and soon after Kate grew too stiff to
Jeave her box stall. At the last she would not lie down, for
I think she knew if she lay down she could not rise again.

One day when my brother Jack was in the barn he
heard a sound from her stall like a long sigh and hurried
over to see what was wrong. Her hind legs had given
away and she was sitting on her haunches with her eyes
glazed over. Kate had come to the end of the long
furrow, but she died as she lived, with her head up and
her ears back!

CHAPTER XVII
LIMITATIONS

ONE Sunday at church I received a great message of
comfort from Mr. Hall, the minister, when he read the
passage from Revelation that describes the outcasts from
the heavenly city :—‘‘For without are dogs,” he read and

I sat up with a shot through my heart. Dogs....! I
supposed he meant bad dogs who bit tails. ‘Sorcerers
and whoremongers,” I didn’t know any of them... . 1

did not know what the words meant, “murderers and
idolators,” and then I got my message of comfort, ‘‘who-
soever loveth and maketh a lie.” My heart sang with
joy. ... 1 was not in that list, for though I had made a
lie, I had not loved it. God, who knows everything would
know I had not loved it. I lied because I couldn’t help
myself, but I did not love it.

I had my mind almost made up to tell Mr. Hall in the
fervor of my happiness. I craved absolution. But I got
no opportunity then, and as my exaltation faded, caution
came back. This matter was between God and me, and
I would not widen the base. ... Poor Mrs. Dick Walters
was a lesson in keeping one’s mouth shut. Everyone
knew what had happened to her. At the revival meet-
ings, held by Mr. Hall at his Souris City appointment
Mrs. Walters had fallen under conviction of sin and had
confessed a mishap of her girlhood. She was only
seventeen when it happened, but as the result of her con-
fession her home was broken, her husband had cast her
off, not that he wanted to, but he felt he had to prove his
manliness to his neighbors. So he put her out without a
dollar. He was a coarse, cursing, rough fellow, but he
couldn’t live in the house with a woman who had sinned!
She had reared her eight children and worked like a

184

LIMITATIONS 135

slave; had been patient and kind, a good neighbor—
everything a woman should be. She was working now in* .,
a hotel in Brandon and her family was lost without her!
Oh, if she had only kept quiet no one would ever have
known, for the Isle of Skye is a long way from Manitoba,
and thirty years should be long enough to expiate any
sin. I shut my lips tight when I though of her and re-
solved that I would never go to a revival meeting as long
as I lived.

But I experienced a great lightening of my heart that
day in church. If God understood, what need I care? I
hoped now I could forget it.

Threshing time came on and I was back at school,
and working in a feverish joy. The days were mistily
bright and odorous, full of the glamor of autumn. The
two-mile walk was a progress of beauty—the grass crisp
beneath my feet, the sky blue overhead and the Tiger
Hills mauve with mystery. Hannah had told me stories of
English history and recited poetry, as we walked and I
had never had a happier time. I was getting on; we were
all getting on. The big crop had not turned out as well
as it had promised, but there would be no lack of food
and clothes. Indeed I never thought of these things. My
heart was so full of the overwhelming thirst for know-
ledge, I did not place much value on material things,
though I did look forward to a time when I could earn
money, wear well-cut clothes, red in color, and have a
pair of gold cuff-links with a horse’s head on each one.
No one could ask for more than that from the powers of
this world. I was well contented with my lot in life, es-
pecially now since my conscience was clear.

One day we had the ‘‘Miller o’ the Dee,” for our read-
ing lesson. The king was speaking to the merry miller,
telling him how fortunate he was to have plenty but not
too much, and no worries with councillors, advisers,
foreign powers, wars, taxes and the other entanglements
that come to vex a king. I was in the Fourth Book then,
running neck and neck with Annie Adams and only a few

A

136 CLEARING IN THE WEST

marks behind her. That day Annie missed a word in
spelling, “blythe,” it was, and when I reached the head
of the class, a dark wave of anger kindled the fair cheek
of my deskmate. Annie liked me in my place, but my
glace was not ahead of her, as we stood before the
teacher’s desk. It was the first time I had reached the
dizzy heights of being at the head of the reading class
and I may have been offensively proud. Anyway, I was
heading for punishment.

When we went out to play Annie handed me a sore
blow: “You needn’t be so pleased about getting ahead of
me. I let you spell me down because I am sorry for you.
I don’t know how you can bear to come to school, wear-
ing your only dress. Everyone knows you have no Sun-
day dress now, and this one is getting too short for you.”

Ah me, it’s the truth that hurts! and I reeled under
her blow. But when I recovered I tried to think of some-
thing that would be a crushing reply. I thought of some-
thing too in the next period and I would say it to her
when school was let out, and I knew how I would say it
too. I had not listened to the serial stories in the Family
Herald without learning something. I would draw my-
self up to my full height and with a curling lip and a
flashing eye hiss out the words. I could hardly wait for
the time to come, so well prepared I was.

“You’—I would say. ‘You—dare to taunt me with
my lack of raiment! What are dresses anyway, but
things that perish, you, who would clothe the body and
starve the soul. What do you know of the Scottish Chiefs
or the Tales of the Border?”

By noon my anger had cooled, I couldn’t say it. It
was too deadly and anyway, I knew I would have a nice
new dress as soon as threshing was over and mother went
to Brandon; and besides I knew something else. I was
going to Brandon myself when mother went. Maybe that
would hold Miss Adams!

I would let it go! I would have my revenge another
way! And I would never let her see the top of the class

LIMITATIONS 137

again. Miss Adams’ sun had set. I told myself grimly,
she would rue the day she taunted me!

The girls at school, Annie included, were doing fancy
work at noons crocheting lace and doing wool-work for
table mats on corks with pins, and I was seized with a
desire to create something beautiful too. It looked quite
easy and I got a hook from Lizzie and a spool of white
thread and was all ready to go when I made a painful
discovery. It was not easy at all. I could not get the
right crook in my little finger, and I seemed to have no
way of making the stitches of uniform length. The
veteran fancy workers who were now doing intricate
designs in Gordon braid, raised their eye-brows as they
watched my frantic efforts. I put my tongue out too,
which was always a sign with me of mighty concen-
tration. But I could not make a scallop that had not a
bulge and the thread soon lost its snowy hue. It was hard
to take the things they said as they talked over my head.
Even Annie’s little sister Maude who had just started to
school could do the mile-a-minute pattern. There was
only one thing I could do.

I renounced all forms of handwork; and plunged into
the regular work of the school with greater diligence;
though my heart was sore at my defeat. I professed a
great disdain for lace trimmed petticoats and drawers.
Plain ones for me. Underwear should be neat but not
gaudy! And how I studied my spellings, drew maps and
memorized all the poetry in our readers; and recited
with gestures one Friday afternoon:

“The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

They did not leave their reading books
To fool around with crochet hooks;

They did not slight their history-notes
To make lace for their petticoats;

138 CLEARING IN THE WEST

But step by step they did advance

And gave no thought to coat or pants!
So let my steps be ever led

Away from wool, and crochet thread;
And let my heart be set to find

The higher treasures of the mind.”

I did not get clear away. The crocket squad were
not deceived by my high resolves. Little Maude Adams
tried to comfort me by telling me her mother knew a
woman once who couldn’t crochet or do any fancy work
either and it was all right. She couldn’t help it. Her
father and mother were cousins.

CHAPTER XVIII
RETRIBUTION

A FEW nights after this, something happened that made
me forget the head of the class, my high resolves, the
new dress, or the trip to Brandon.

I came home from school, changed my one dress into Dp:
an old gingham which had been Hannah’s, and ran out “
to dig potatoes for supper. I liked digging potatoes;
maybe, because I was not often allowed to do it for
father liked to dig them himself, but he was helping the
Ingrams to thresh. It was lovely to see the big ones
rolling out of the ground, and to keep from cutting them Vv
with the hoe required some skill. The straw stacks
gleamed like piles of pure gold on the faded stubble; the
grass was tawny and crisp with autumn; and the cattle
could run now anywhere they liked and I was free—
free until the crop grew again, and that was a long time.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I had not seen Nap.
He had not come to meet us at Kennedy’s corner as usual.
A man was coming up the bank of the creek, it was
Jimmy Sloan, the waterman of the threshing outfit. He
came running up from the creek where he had been
filling his water tank from the big pool. The threshers
were working at Mr. Ingram’s; but Jimmy still came to
the big pool on our farm for water for the engine.

The increased crops had shelved the old-fashioned
horse-power machines, and a new steam thresher owned
by Billy Ferguson of Glenboro had come into our neigh-
borhood.

“T think your dog is in trouble, Nellie,” Jimmy called
to me, “I saw him this afternoon fighting with a boar,
that belongs to Jack Thinn. I tried to get him away, but

139

140 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Nap seemed to think he should finish the fight. He was
pretty badly chewed but game for more,”

“Where is he?” I asked, distressed at the thought of
Nap being hurt.

“Across the creek, on the ploughed field they were,”
Jimmy said. “But I don’t see anything of them now;
maybe Nap has come home, though, has he?”

“No, he hasn’t come home! Take in the potatoes
Jimmy,” I said, thrusting the pail into his hands. “I
must find him.”

The short October evening was drawing in, it would
soon be dark, and I never needed daylight so terribly.
Nap might be lying bleeding to death some place where
I could not see him. I ran across the creek bed and over
to the ploughed field. There were signs of deadly com-
bat; black hair and blood; the ground torn up. I ran
and called and listened.

The stillness of evening mocked me, gentle sounds of
cow bells, loaded wagons, the distant hum of the thresh-
ing machine, voices, cows lowing, geese clearing their
throats. A warm breath of air from somewhere quickly
replaced by the cool breeze. “O Nap, Nap,” I called.
“Answer me! Nap!”

I turned back to get Hannah to help me, and crossed
the creek farther up, and as I raced over the bank, some-
thing caught my eye in the bushes. Something that made
my heart skip a beat. It was Nap, a poor bundle of
blood-stained fur. He had tried to crawl home and had
fallen here, weak from loss of blood.

I knelt beside him in the gray light, and saw, to my
great joy that he was still living; but with every beat of
of his heart, blood flowed from his breast, torn open by
the boar’s fangs. He knew me and tried to lift his ears.

T ran to the house for flour, to stop the blood and came
back with a milk-pan full, and a roller towel, taken from
the clothes line. I put handfulls of flour on his breast,
but the red stains came through. Then I piled on all I
had and wrapped him in the towel as tightly as I could

RETRIBUTION 141

draw it. He felt horribly limp and lifeless. I ran down
to the pool where Jimmy was still filling the water tank
with a pail.

“You'll have to carry him Jimmy,” I said. “I can’t
lift him and I am afraid he’s going to die.”

“T’ve got to take the water back to the machine,” he
said, “but Pll come right back. This is my last load for
the night. Get a drink of milk into him, if he can swallow,
and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Now remember a dog
can take a lot of killing, and as long as he is breathing,
there’s a chance,”

I got a bow] of milk from the milk house, and went
back and sat beside him and talked to him in an agony of
remorse. Was it for this I had saved him, by lying for
him? Saved him from a quick merciful death, to die like
this? One quick straight bullet if I had told the truth,
and then no more of anything, no pain, no bleeding, no
fear, no blinding rage,—just peace and a great darkness
and the day ended, his happy dog’s day over. But
now, here he was broken, bleeding, suffering, and I could
not save him. He was out of my hands now.

Sometimes I thought his breath had stopped, so faint
it was. I wet my fingers in the milk and put them on his
his tongue, but he made no response. But still I felt he
knew me.

“I won’t leave you, Nap,” I told him and I know he was
glad to have me beside him.

Jimmy came back and hitched one of his horses to the
stone-boat. I could have done that myself, but there was
not a horse or an ox on the place—and all our men were
helping at the threshing. Jimmy thought this was easier
for Nap than to be carried. We got Nap into the old
house, now used as a granary, and put him on a pile of
grain sacks.

“You can’t do anything more,” Jimmy said to me.
“Now don’t you stay out here, breaking your heart. I'll
put this horse blanket over him and you go on into the
house. He may live, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

142 CLEARING IN THE WEST

It was dark in the granary and I went into the house
to get a lantern. Mother came back with me, and looked
at Nap. His eyes were closed but he moved an ear when
she spoke to him.

“I am sorry for you, Nellie,” she said, “but if he does
die, it will be a relief in a way. I’ve been afraid he might
chase the cows sometime, or the neighbors’ cows and have
to be shot. When a dog gets a bad habit, its hard to
break him. We’ll warm some milk and feed it to him
with a spoon, and put hot bricks beside him; he’s cold
from the loss of blood. You go in and warm the milk
and I'll stay beside him.”

I brought back the milk and held the lantern while
mother tried to make him swallow. But the milk ran
down his jaws. She shook her head.

“I think he’ll be gone in the morning,” she said.
“Remember, he’s only a dog, child, and not many dogs
live out their days. If he’s living in the morning we
will wash the blood off him and dress his wounds, but I
don’t think it is well to disturb him now.”

I nearly told her then, but I knew it would hurt her
to know I could lie so stoutly as I had. I couldn’t eat
that night, nor did I look at a book.—-I slipped out again
with my coat on, for it was cold in the granary; and I
sat beside him in the dark, stroking his head. If he were
going to die, I wanted to be with him. I had carried him
in my arms when he was a pup, watched him grow into
the lovely dog he had been; had him these years for my
friend and playmate; we had sat together on the hills and
minded the cattle,—he had guarded the hen-house door,
when I forgot it—he could all but speak to me; and
always knew if I were worried. I would stay with him
if he were going to die, but over and above my grievings,
I could feel, in the silence of that long night in the
granary, there was a power that was working in life, a
great unseen power, a law, an unchanging law, and Nap
and J, and everyone was subject to it, and we couldn’t
escape it. I couldn’t pray that night. It all seemed so

RETRIBUTION 143

useless. The power of the law was so heavy, so in-
exorable. Without the shedding of blood there is no re-
mission of sins! And I thought I could change that with
a lie! And some have thought they could change it with
prayer. The laws of God could not be changed. They
were like the multiplication tables. How pitiful we were
in our helplessness, under the law .... under the law.
Why had there to be such suffering? And who asked to
be born anyway? I didn’t! Neither did Nap! Nobody
did!

Through the window above my head, I could see a
bright star, twinkling in the western sky. I wondered
about it. I wondered if there were people living on it,
and if they were under the law, or if they cared? The
world was so big, and this star was a world too... .
It began to blot me out....

It was grey day when I wakened, and a pale light
was draining in through the window. The granary with
its discarded harness, boxes, fanning mill, horse collars
hanging on nails, parts of machinery, took shape. Then
I remembered and looked at Nap; he was still living, but
his body still had a terrible coldness and his eyes were
dim.

I went into the house and lighted the kitchen fire.
Mother would soon be up and she’d be glad to have the fire
burning. J put the kettle on; I would try again to get
Nap to take hot milk. She came into the kitchen then.
“You're up early dear, I didn’t hear you come down and
that’s queer, I though I heard everything. Is he still
alive?” I nodded. She didn’t know I had been out all
night.

The fire was crackling cheerfully and hot porridge

AS

©

would soon be steaming on the table. Mother’s face __
looked heavenly to me. I couldn’t put it into words, but .

some glimmering of life’s plan swept across my mind.
Sorrow and joy, pain and gladness, triumph and defeat
were in the plan, just as day and night; winter and sum-
mer, cold and heat, tears and laughter. We couldn’t

144 CLEARING IN THE WEST

}\refuse it, we must go on. We couldn’t go and sulk in a
; ‘corner and say we wouldn’t play.

The sun swept up over the horizon and all the land-
scape kindled and blazed. It was a new day and I was
part of it.

Mother was taking wood for the fire out of the oven
where she had put it to dry. ‘Now call the men, Nellie,
we're all a bit late this morning.”

When I came back she was stirring the porridge. The
day’s routine had begun. The cows were standing at the
pasture bars, and the milk pails were waiting outside on
the bench, scalded and aired. I was glad of the cows
standing at the bars, bawling indolently, just to be doing
something, glad I had to go out and milk them. Work!
That was life’s remedy. Not philosophy or explanations.
There was no formula, no answer for the old problems.

\ But we could go on. We had to go on. We were like
‘horses on horse power engines, travelling in circles, not
knowing why we were doing it, but just as they were
accomplishing something, maybe we were too. og
“You look tired Nellie,’ mother was saying. ‘“You’re
fretting too much over the dog. I never thought you
took anything hard; for you are Irish, like your father,
and light-hearted, but you mustn’t worry over what you
can’t help. Animals will fight; their instinct drives them.
Nap thought he was protecting us when he attacked the
boar. Cats kill birds, just because it is their nature; they
are driven by their instincts and they can’t be blamed.
Nature is cruel, I often wonder why; red in tooth and
claw.” -¢

When I went outside to milk, I felt better. I
never could be gloomy in the sunshine. The morning
glow burned in the windows of the Ingram house and
came back in a glittering beam. The hens were coming
out of their house, full of cheerful observations and when
I pulled my milking stool over to the big cow, she put her
foot back, and turned her head toward me, with a friend-
ly look in her big eyes. I laid my head against her warm

RETRIBUTION 145

white flank, and was grateful for the comfort of it, and as
the milk foamed in the bright tin pail with a rhythmic
thrumming, the little cow came up behind me so close, I
could feel her soft breath on my neck.

There were bright spots in life’s pattern.

Nap did not die. I stayed home from school with him
for a week, and by that time he was well enough to walk,
but he lurched and swayed uncertainly. He lived on milk
for two weeks and had three eggs a day,—but we did not
let him know he was getting eggs, because he might be
tempted to help himself later. Billy Smith, the butcher
who came once a week from Glenboro, brought him bones,
and a new growth came to him, making him a bigger,
finer dog than he had ever been. And as I saw this
great growth and bounding spirits come back to Nap,
my burden of guilt was lifted.

CHAPTER XIX
My First SIGHT OF BRANDON

MOTHER, Jack and I went to Brandon the first week of
December, on a load of wheat, and for a thirty-mile drive
on a heavily loaded sleigh, necessitating a slow pace, it is
a cold way of travelling. But with plenty of robes and
by running behind the sleigh, occasionally, we managed
very well.

It was a bright winter day with new snow, loud with
frost. Every fence post and leafless silver willow shrub,
every clump of willow wands bordering the streams,
every roof of house or stable was edged with hoar frost
that glinted and sparkled as the sun rose. The world with
its glittering whiteness, blue sky and chiming sleigh-
bells, was one glorious come-to-life Christmas card.

I knew a verse about a snowy morning, which I
wanted to recite to mother, but it is not easy to recite
through a woollen scarf and besides I was shy about
reciting poetry before Jack, who would think I was trying
to show off. Jack had a high disdain for anything senti-
mental, and had not wanted to put the sleigh-bells on tne
horses but mother held firm on that, for sleigh-bells had
a significance to her. The winter of the deep snow when
she had been alone for three long and terrible weeks,
with snow so deep no one could get through, the signal
of release had been young Robert Lowery’s sleigh-bells,
as he ploughed his team through the snow, and she said
the bells of heaven could not be sweeter.

I wanted to recite: “The snow had begun in the
gloaming, and busily all the night had been heaping field
and highway with a silence deep and white.” But I
couldn’t break through. However, I would tell her about
it, when we were alone.

146

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 147

It was curious to see what happened to the Brandon
Hills, as we travelled nearer to them. From our place
the Brandon Hills make a dark blue shoulder that rises
abruptly from the plain, but as we approached, this
prominence straightened out and become merely a
country-side of small hills and shadowy blue valleys with
farm buildings here and there, in sheltered places.
Columns of smoke climbing straight into the clean air
from the houses, and a few cattle circling a straw stack
made the only bits of color in this white world.

We reached the Black Creek Stopping house at noon,
and had dinner with Mrs. Corbett. Mrs. Corbett had
belonged to the Salvation Army in Winnipeg, before she
came to the Black Creek, and was rejoicing over the
Army’s conquest of Brandon.

“Ain’t it grand entirely,” she said as she served us
from the stove, “how well the Army is doin’ in Brandon,
and I’m tellin’ you there’s an improvement here too.
Harry Lovey—maybe you know him, he drives for
Nicoll’s big farm—teams every day to Brandon and back,
well he’s got it, and asks a blessin’ at the table here, yes
sir, in all the rush and bustle of this room, says Harry in
a high hollow voice not a bit like his own, ‘Let us return
thanks! and mind you, every head went down.—-They say
he preached over at Brandon Hills, when the minister
couldn’t get through, on account of the snow, and them
that heard him says he can bate Mr. Cheney all to the
divil. Oh, he’s a man of education is Harry but it’s smali
use he’s been puttin’ it te, heretofore. ... You should go
Mrs. Mooney, and take your little girl, when you’re in
Brandon. She’ll never forget it, at her age, she’s old
enough to take it in too.”

“T’ll see,” mother said in her guarded way. “Little
girls of her age are best in bed.”

Mrs. Corbett’s stopping house was one big room, with
one end used for a kitchen, in which stood a great high-
oven black stove where Mrs. Corbett with quick move-
ments filled the plates with a cut of roast beef and helpings

148 CLEARING IN THE WEST

of turnips, potatoes and gravy. Each man, who was
helped took a place at the long table, covered with oil-
cloth, where he found everything else he needed.

“Da,’”’ Corbett, traversed the length of the table with
a blue enamel tea pot and filled the cups that were
stationed at every place. Bread and butter, pickles,
biscuits and cheese were set at close intervals, along the
length of the table and it took but little time to serve
thirty or forty men,

Mother and I were set at a little table near the stove
and our plates were brought to us.

“It’s a treat to see a woman,” said Mrs. Corbett, in her
friendly way. She was a tall woman, with a pair of long
jet earrings that lashed around her face as she talked.
She wore an embroidered Jersey and a short black skirt,
and a clean white apron with a pointed bib, trimmed
with Gordon braid.

“I saw there was a woman drivin’ in and I grabbed
my white apron, that I keep here in the drawer of the
cupboard. It’s women that notice; men just want their
vittles and a lot they care who gives it to them. ...

And the first thing I thought, Mrs. Mooney, when I
8aw you, was that I was glad I had the place white
washed after the flies were done. If the walls are clean,
no one will notice the floors, for floors can be dirtied in
a few minutes, but it takes time to dirty walls and no one
minds new dirt, anyway.”

Mrs. Corbett had set us near to her so she could get
a chance to talk, and said so frankly.

“It’s a relief to get my eyes on a woman and they
come so seldom too. There’s pie for desert, little girl, so
don’t be fillin’ yourself too full of potatoes.”

“You can accommodate a great many people here,”
mother said admiringly, “you are a good manager, I can
see.”

“Well I do and I am, you might say. You see the lads
are all fightin’ hungry and that’s a great help, though

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 149

it’s hard on the grub. But they’re not nosey, I’ll say that
for them.”

“Haven’t you any help at all?” asked mother.

“Just Da and Peter Rocket over there, and Peter just
scrapes plates and washes them and Da keeps the table
filled and pours the tea. Peter is not as bright as some,
but a good lad too....

It’s good money, forty cents a meal, women and child-
ren free, and glad to see them, and then a stable fee of
twenty-five cents a team, if you bring your own oats.
We're not doing so badly at that, and everyone is pleasant,
poor lads, I often wonder how they are, comin’ in so cold
and discouraged with the price of wheat so low; and them
havin’ to wait in a line for hours to get it sold.”

She was ladling out food on two plates as she talked.
“The farmer is the only man that has to take what he
can get for his stuff,’ she went on, shouting at us over
the shoulder of a big teamster who stooped down to get
his plate filled, and then turned back to get another baked
onion.

“Because there are so many of them all raisin’ the
same stuff and instead of helpin’ each other by standin’
together and lettin’ one man speak for all of them, they
cut each other’s throats without meanin’ to, but maybe
they’ll learn.

Come and get your pie sissy, and a piece for your
mother, here’s raisin’ and this is dried apple—take the
raisin’; Peter, come here and pour tea, Da’s gone out and
the men are lookin’ for it.”

“T’m washin’ dishes,” Peter said stolidly, “and I’d have
to wash my hands before I could pour tea for anywan....
wait a minute.”

I could see he was a lout of a boy, who could not
even think of two things at once.

There was an impatient rattling of spoons on cups.
So I jumped up and went to the stove.

“Let me do it,” I said, and took the smallest pot on
the stove and went down the line. ‘

150 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I could hear Mrs. Corbett’s voice above the chatter.

“Look at that now, there’s a girl with a quick turn,
and her not more than twelve years old. I’d be a proud
woman, if I had a little girl like that comin’ along. By
gosh, I like action.”

After the men had eaten they sat on the benches
beside the stove and soon the room was blue with smoke.

“You might as well rest a while,” said Mrs. Corbett
to us, “there will be no chance of sellin’ the wheat to-
night. That street leadin’ to the elevator is one solid line
of teams up till eight o’clock every night. The thing is
to get your load in the line and leave it there, and hook
up early in the mornin’ and if you’re early enough you
may be able to edge up nearer the elevator. It’s a crime
the way the grain companies treat the farmers. And the
railways and all. Look what happened to Grand Valley!
Just because McVickers wanted too much for his farm,
when they were lookin’ for a townsite the whole place
had to suffer. My sister and her man were there, built a
house and all; sure the railway would come, they had been
promised it, but what of that... . The Syndicate was
not carin’, and changed the station to Brandon. Mrs.
Mooney, it’s time the women had something to say about
things.”

My mother shook her head.

“It isn’t a woman’s place,” she said, with her Scotch
voice. “Surely, if men can’t do these things, there’s no
use of women trying. It will all come in time, don’t you
think? Remember the country is young and the men are
so busy getting a foot hold.”

“Yes, and that’s the time women should get into
things, and get everything off on the right foot. If J
weren’t so busy feedin’ hungry men and makin’ breac
and pies in my spare time, I could think out a few things
Maybe you’!ll do it sissy, when you grow up.”

“Maybe I will,” I said eagerly, “‘I’d like to.”

¢ When we were in the sleigh again, Mother told me, I
should not be so forward. It did not look well for a little

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 161

girl to jump up and pour tea for strange men. Mrs.
Corbett was well able to run her own house; and all that
talk about women doing things was nonsense. It’s wo-
men’s place to help the men and keep out of public matters -
and out of public notice.”

“Mrs. Corbett talks too much, and has a certain bold-
ness about her that I do not like, with those swinging
earrings she looks like a gypsy. ... I was not pleased with
you, Nellie.’

Jack agreed with her. Jack was sixteen and knew a
lot. “I felt cheap,” he said, when the men at the table
were all saying: “Got a new waiter, eh? Who’s the kid?
Some of them knew too, who you were.”

“Well, supposing they did,” I said, “I didn’t spill the
tea down anyone’s neck, did I?”

“Nellie, not a word, you’re too ready with an answer,
your brother is right.* You did a bold thing, getting out
there where everyone could see you. Though I know
you did it on impulse and with a desire to help, but it
did not look modest.”

“She did it to show off,” Jack said, “and nothing

else, she likes to be noticed; we made a mistake in bring-
ing her.”
s The argument was an old one and I did not pursue
it further. I could see nothing wrong in what I had done.
Why shouldn’t I pour tea for strange men? Mother was
wrong in her attitude this time, but I would be free some
day and I was not going to be cast down over it. I got
off the sleigh and ran behind a while and put the whole
matter out of my mind.,

We came into Brandon from the southeast, passing
the great yellow brick Court House, the largest building
I had ever seen. The new wooden houses, scattered
irregularly over the white prairie looked like children’s
blocks thrown down in a hurry, only they were all one
color, in the pale light of evening, pinkish yellow, the
color of human faces. [I had wondered how the

152 CLEARING IN THE WEST

houses were arranged in a city; were they continuous?
or were there gaps between? and if so, what were in the
gaps? It bothered me, but I would soon know, so I said
nothing.

When we got into the city, we passed down a Jong
street of stores, and other places of business standing
side by side. Outside the stores fur coats and fur robes
hung, horse collars, and sets of harness with brass trim-
mings, and in front of one a full-sized painted wooden
Indian wrapped in a blanket. Through the frosted
windows red lamps shone, and in the small clear spaces I
could see that some of the lamps had slashed red tissue
paper shades hung over them, and I hoped they would not
catch fire. The sidewalks seemed to be full of merchandise,
zinc tubs, wheelbarrows, axe handles and so many things
that the people had to step into the street in some places.
There were people everywhere I looked, nearly all men,
in fur coats and caps.

The predominant smell was of lumber, shingles and
tar paper and from the time we entered the city, we
could hear sounds of building, hammering and sawing;
loads of lumber were drawn through the crowded narrow
street.

Here was life and color and movement in this great
swarming city, and we would be here for two nights and
a day. My resentment faded out, in this new be-
wildered happiness.

Jack knew his way around, having been here many
times the winter before on the grain sleighs. He drove
straight down to Pacific Street to the Farmer’s Home, a
high unpainted new hotel facing the railway track. I
liked the location for now I would see the trains. Gen-
erally my people stayed at the Kelly House, but there had
been some fights and disturbances of drunken men there,
and the Farmer’s Home, being newer, was considered
quieter. We got a nice room, with one across the hall, for
Jack, and when we got freshened up a little, went down
for supper, to a long narrow dining room, lighted by

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 158

bracket lamps and a large glass fringed chandelier. The
table napkins in fan shapes flared out of heavy water
glasses and the table cloth had a red edge.

“Can we go to hear the Salvation Army to-night?”
TIT asked. “I would like to go.”

“Don’t let her mother,” Jack began, “she’s too young
to be out at night.”

“I am too tired to go,” mother said, “my face burns
with the wind, but I’ll see if there’s anyone going from
here. I’d like you to go, won’t you take her Johnny ?”—

“I won’t go with him,” I said, getting in ahead of
him.

Jack explained his side of the case. “I don’t want
her trailing after me. I want to go with some fellows
I was talking to at the Stopping House.”

The waitress solved the problem. She was a tired,
sad young woman, with a drooping face and carriage and
I think it was her extreme homeliness that made mother
believe in her trustworthiness. She must be a good girl,
with a face like that. Her hair was draggled and her
mouth sagged. She looked like a doll that had been out in
the rain.

Mother always took to homely people or bitter medi-
cines. She had confidence in them. I remember once a
doctor prescribed something for her and because it was
pleasant to the taste she wouldn’t take it. It could not
possibly have any virtue.

Bertha, the waitress said, in her sad way, she would
be glad to take the little girl, and she was going to the
Army. Yes, she was going alone, though she might meet
a friend there. But it was all right, she’d be in early.
She couldn’t get out before half past eight though, on
account of having to do part of the dishes.

I offered to help, and Bertha said I could. “She’s a
nice quiet girl, I can see,’ mother said, when I came up
to the room to get my coat and cardigans. “Now, Nellie,

remember, this is a big wicked city, and you’re an in-w~

x

154 CLEARING IN THE WEST

* nocent little country girl, and don’t be picking up with
’ strangers. Your fault is you are too friendly.”

I had one of the olive green homespun coats with a
red flannel lining in it, a great long red scarf that wrap-
ped around me like the Highlander’s plaidie, a red toque,
with a tassel and red mittens.

Bertha took my hand, and we set out, in fine spirits.
There were no street lights, but never having seen
street lights I did not miss them. We could see the sleighs
of wheat filling the road-way dimly outlined in the frosty
starlight.

“It’s quite a walk,” Bertha said, “but we'll go in and
get warmed where the Medicine show is going on, if we
can get in.”

We went up Sixth Street and then climbed a stairs
that creaked and groaned beneath our feet, to a hall above
a harness shop.

People were standing at the back of a bright room
and we pushed in. It was warm, but not pleasant, for
the odors of wet fur and stale tobacco smoke polluted
the air. But I wanted to hear what was going on.

A man with a red satin coat edged with gray fur,
had a bottle in his hand, and a table beside him was full
of similar bottles and a lady, in green satin, sat at a
piano, facing the audience.

“Here it is, ladies and gents,’’ he was saying. “The
greatest living known remedy, no drugs, no stupifying
narcotics but distilled from Nature’s choicest, sweetest,
most powerful herbs, and bitter herbs and grasses, fed
by the dew and rain, and sweetened by the sun, planted
on earth for suffering humanity. The old doctor’s
greatest discovery, Nature’s own remedy to rout, dispel,
and destroy disease and bring back lustre to the eyes and
roses to the cheek, lightness to the step and joy to the
heart, bitter on the tongue and purifying to the blood.
If the blood is right, you’re all right. Don’t take my
word for it, I’ll show you what it does; Miss Lipkin show
the tape worm.”

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 156

The pianist lifted a glass jar from the top of the
piano and held it aloft.

“Forty-one feet long, head on both ends and a knot
in the middle, and this was eliminated when the second
bottle was taken, by a party in your midst, whose name
will not be mentioned but can be ascertained. Given up
by doctors, as a last resort he tried our remedy—the
great swamp root bitters, and to-day is a well man....
leaping and running as one of old. Step up ladies and
gents, and spend a dollar on your health. The great
health restorer. ... What is your trouble? It can re-
lieve tnaem all. Floating kidneys, fallen arches, glands in
the neck or sty on the eyes, boils, bunions, erosions or
eruptions, the ip, the pip, the peesy-weesy, or the gout.”

More people crowded in now, and we were nearer
the front. The pianist was handing out the bottles and
receiving the dollar bills. I had my little purse fastened
into my coat pocket with a safety pin. I got it out, and
extracted the one dollar it contained. It was the chance of
a lifetime!

Putting the bottle inside my coat, I could hold it
easily with my elbow and Bertha and I went down the
stairs. “Maybe your mother won’t like you spending
your dollar this way,” said Bertha sadly. “Oh but she
will,” I said quickly. ‘I’m glad I came, maybe this will
cure her. She has headaches you know, it won’t freeze
under my coat, will it?” Bertha thought not.

We went down the street and came to the Army Bar-
racks where a great crowd of people were milling around
the door. Inside a drum beat, and a fife shrilled a tune.
Under a street light, a man in blue uniform was leading
the singing, clapping his hands together to keep them
warm ;—“For you there is cleansing in the blood.”

A man came up to us and spoke to Bertha. ‘“What’s
been keeping you?” he said crossly.

“Tl bet that’s her brother,” I thought.

“T came as soon as I could, Fred, honest I did, we’re
awful busy now, at the house.”

156 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Then he noticed me.

“What’s this?” he asked, rudely, I thought.

She explained my presence.

“Can she get back alone? Fred asked pointedly, “we
can’t take her down there.”

“JT don’t want to go Fred, not to-night. You see I got
the kid on my hands.”

Fred took her arm, and hustled her along, but they
talked so low, I couldn’t hear what they said. I followed
along behind them. We came to a brilliantly lighted hall.
Music, violin music, punctured by drum beats, came out
to us and the rhythmic scuffle of dancing feet. The blinds
were up and I could see the dancers weaving and passing.

Fred and Bertha hesitated for a minute and I saw
her hand him a slender roll of bills. A big sign in the
window said: “Gent’s $1.00, Ladies, free.

We went in. They had forgotten me by this time,
but J followed them in.

There was one man in the middle of the room acting
funny like a clown and people were laughing at him, as
he snatched at the girls who danced past him. Suddenly
he fell on his face and the orchestra stopped and every-
one rushed together. They carried him out through a
back door and the music began again, and no one seemed
to think any more about him.

There were two narrow stairs leading up to a less
brightly lighted place above, where I could see people
eating and drinking at little tables.

Suddenly, I shrank back into my corner and pulled
my toque down over my face. Jack had just come in with
two other young fellows and was walking over to the
place marked, “Gent’s overcoats.” Now, I must get out!
If Jack saw me, he would feel it his duty to take me right
back to the hotel. ... I looked for Bertha and Fred but
the floor was crowded with dancers and I couldn’t see
them. Anyway, I could tell the man at the door who took
the money, that I was going and if Bertha were looking
for me—he would tell her. But I didn’t think Bertha

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 157

would remember anything about me. I had seen girls
go into a trance of delight like this when they had a
beau.

I made my escape safely for no one took the slightest
notice of me. The man at the door cut short my ex-
planations with a wave of his hand.

The air was still frosty and it smelled late. Indeed
the street beyond the circle of light looked black and
wicked. But I wasn’t going to be afraid. There was
nothing to be afraid of, and I would know the Farmer’s
Home when I came to it. Hotels are always open.

The street had a strange look to me as I started out.
Still I could ask, if I were not sure,—but I wished Bertha
hadn’t deserted me.

I started off quickly, I might be afraid but I wouldn’t
let on I was. I’d find the Farmer’s Home all right. It
was just over there about a half mile;—not any farther
than the cross-ways of the pasture at home. It wouldn’t
take me long, and I could run when I got away from the
lights.

A man was walking very fast behind me, gaining on
me. I was getting frightened as his heavy steps drew
nearer. There was no use in running. I knew that. If
you run, it shows you are afraid.

Then he called, “Hold on kid, I want to speak to you!”

I turned around and he said, “Say kid, don’t get scared.
Aren’t you the little girl that poured tea for us to-day
at the Stopping House?”

I hesitated. I did pour tea for men, once at a stop-
ping house, but that was a long time ago, it seemed like
a month.

“Yes, I did,” I said and waited to see what he wanted.
Now, I would know the worst. Maybe mother was right,
maybe he thought I was a bold hussy and he could speak
to me any way he liked.

While this was flashing through my mind, the man
was saying:

“I just thought it was you when I saw you go out

158 CLEARING IN THE WEST

and I came after you. It’s late for a little girl to be out
alone and there are lots of drunk men around, you might
get a scare. Can I take you, wherever you want to go?
I’d be glad to.”

I thanked him and told him where we were staying.
He didn’t ask me how I came to be at the Music Hall and
I did not volunteer the information.

As we walked along in the darkness he said, “I liked
the way you jumped up and gave a hand to-day, at the
Stopping House. It was just a little thing but it showed
something of your disposition.”

“Mother thinks I am too free in my ways,” I said.
“I do things before I think, but I can’t see any harm in
being friendly, I like people who are friendly with me,
like you are now.”

“Keep on being friendly, kid,’ he said, “It works
both ways.”

I was really very grateful to him though I did not
know how to say it, and when we said goodnight in the
circle of light that came through the front window of the
Farmer’s Home, I got a good look at him, but I never
saw him again, and never knew who he was.

The next morning when we went down to breakfast, I
saw Bertha making signs at me to come out. She had
swung the door out just a little. So I went out to see
what she had to say.

“Say, Iam sorry about last night. Does your mother
know? Oh, that’s good, well you know, Fred would have
me stay and dance and I only get to see him in the even-
ing and sometimes not then. I was going to get him to
have a dance with you. I know it would have pleased
you.”

“I do not dance at public dance-halls,’ I said with
dignity, “I am quite too young for that.”

My voice sounded much more like my mother’s than
my own. I hardly knew it.

“Fred never wants to dance with any one but me,”
Bertha went on rapturously, “but he would have done it,

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 159

if I said so. ... Did you notice how very handsome he
is’?

“T did not!’ I said truthfully.

“O yes,” she said happily, “he is remarkably hand-
some of the Black Hawk type. ... I often wonder what he
see in me.”

I remembered the incident of the slender roll of bills,
that changed hands outside the door, and I wondered too.

“T had not seen him for three days, until last night,
and I was worried. There are plenty of women just
ready to entice a handsome man away. But he’s just
the same dear old Fred. O, I am so much happier now,
you wouldn’t believe.”

Her pallid face actually glowed. “You see we are
almost engaged. He has given me more than one hint
that he is going to propose. We have been keeping com-
pany for nearly a year now, and for the last month, we’ve
been keeping close company.”

There was a fine shading of meaning there, but it was
lost on me. “It’s pretty nice for a girl to have a gentle-
man to take her around, for no nice girl goes out alone.
She would soon be talked about, if she did.”

Here it was again from Bertha and again I rebelled
against it. I would go out alone, any time I wanted to!

Bertha’s draggled face, with her drooping wisps of
hair, giving her that pathetic drowned look, kindled a
sudden rage in me. What fools women were! How.
terribly dependent on men; and how pleased when some
man, no matter how worthless, took notice of them!
Bertha was rambling on.

“I often wonder what he sees in me, I am too pale to
be considered really pretty, but Fred seems to depend on
me some way, and you should see how he bosses me
around. Sometimes you’d think we were really married.”

She was simpering now and looked more horrible than
ever. I couldn’t think of anything to say but I was heart
sorry for her. I knew, young as I was, that Bertha was
a tragedy. The kitchen looked gray and greasy in the

\
!

160 CLEARING IN THE WEST

bright morning light. The table was full of dirty dishes.
There was nothing ahead for her but monotonous work.
She seemed very old to me, as I looked at her and I knew
that Fred would take her money and break her heart. I
wanted to do something about it! Just then the cook
shouted at her to stop “chewin’ the rag and see who was
poundin’ the table inside, and who did she think she was
anyway?”

I went back to the dining room.

Jack joined us before we were through breakfast in
fine humor. He had been up early, hitched up the team,
and sold his wheat. Sixty bushels at seventy-five cents a
bushel. He counted out the money on the table and gave
it to mother.

She was very much pleased with him and praised him
for his success in getting the load sold. I thought it was
very smart of him too.

We waited until he had finished his breakfast, so we
could all go together to do our buying.

“Mother, I got you a bottle of medicine last night,”
Jack said as he ate his porridge.

“Was it swamp root?” I asked, with a sudden fear.
Now I knew what would happen. I had presented my
bottle as soon as she was awake.

“Yes, how do you know, it’s a new thing.”

“Nellie got me one too,” mother said. ‘“You’re good
children to be spending your money on me, but I don’t
need the two bottles, so Nellie can take her back and get
her money.”

“T can’t do that,” I said, hot for battle. “A sale is a
sale, I would have no reason for taking it back.”

“You can tell him your brother bought one too, that’s
all you need to say.”

Seeing a storm about to rise, mother implored me to
be quiet. “You can do it more easily than Johnny, a
young man can’t very well seem to change his mind, but
it’s different with a little girl like you, and the man who
sold you the bottle, wouldn’t think anything of it. Now

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 161

don’t be so headstrong, I'll go with you,—I’1l tell him how
it happened.”

“Why not use both bottles,” Jack said, “I know how
she feels about not wanting to take it back.”

“No, one bottle is enough to see if it is any good and
it won’t hurt her to take it back, I don’t see why she is so
stubborn about it.”

It was the old trouble, with the old solution. Always.
I was the one who was expected to give in.

When we went up to our room to get our things on,
to go out, I sneaked down the stairs with my bottle of
Swamp Root and gave it to Bertha. If anyone in the
world needed it, she did; “lustre to the eye—roses to the
cheek.”’ I was sorry to see my dollar go this way, but at
least the matter was settled.

Neither mother or Jack knew what I had done with
the bottle, so we started out for one big day in good
humor. I had pictured this shopping expedition many
times, and I didn’t want anything to spoil it; I hoped
mother would forget about it, and to that end, kept up
an animated flow of conversation regarding our pur-
chases.

“We'll buy all the men’s things first,’ mother said,
“TI want shirts for your father and cloth to make him a
pair of pants, a suit for George and Johnny, and yarn for
socks.... overalls for the hired men... .”

She had her list written out and consulted it often, as
we went from side to side of the big store. Our parcels
were put in a big wooden box and would be left in the
store until we were leaving the next morning.

I was going to get the makings of a Sunday dress, but
as the piles of parcels grew, I had a momentary fear that
there might be no money left to buy it. But I put that
aside as an unworthy thought. What my mother prom-
ised, she fulfilled, whether of good or evil; I never knew
her to break her word so I gave myself up to the enjoy-
ment of the day.

“Don’t forget your own dress,” I said to her, in a

162 CLEARING IN THE WEST

sudden warm feeling of loyalty to her. I was sorry I had
talked back to her about the medicine. I could have been
more tactful.

“We'll see how the money lasts,’”—she answered, look-
ing at her list with her brows drawn down.

“Tt doesn’t matter much about me, I do not have to go
out and the rest you do.”

The dress goods occupied one side of the store and the
rolls of cloth were arranged diagonally on the deep
shelves. So that not only the ends but six inches of the
side of the roll could be seen. The colors were radiant,
such reds and greens, a lovely greenish blue, called electric
blue. I wished we could get that color for Hannah for it
was just like her eyes. Seal brown was what Lizzie looked
best in, to set off her hair and eyes and she was going to
have a cashmere dress of it, trimmed with velvet of the
same shade.

The clerks were very attentive and carried a chair for
mother to sit on as we went around the store. I can’t
remember that there were any saleswomen; there were
many shoppers in the store and mother met one of the
women who had been tenting near us on the bank of the
Assiniboine. She had gone to Grand Valley and started
a boarding house but the town was moved to Brandon,
so they were trying to farm, but she hated it. She
had always lived ina town. She had lost little Lucy who
was the baby when we saw them in Winnipeg, but she
was buying white flannel and I knew what that meant. I
thought she ought to be glad, but she wasn’t. She had
lost her teeth and looked like an old woman. Mother was
deeply sorry and kept telling her not to cry. No doubt
the worst was over... . but, with the callousness of
youth, I wanted to get rid of her—we should get on with
our buying.

The streets were full of men and sleighs. I had
" never seen so many people. I wondered where they came
from. Oxen with their hair standing up, with the cold,
like plush, stood patiently waiting, but the poor horses

MY FIRST SIGHT OF BRANDON 163

with their shorter hair and some of them unblanketed,
pulled on their halters and blew their breath out in clouds
of vapor.

In front of the Kelly House we saw three teams
without blankets as we passed, and when we came back
to the hotel for noon they were still there shivering and
pawing the snow. Mother went in and spoke to the man
at the desk about them, and he promised to look up the
owners.

“They are somewhere in the House,” he said, “and
T’ll get them. It is a shame to leave their horses like
this.” .
“Look in the bar,” mother said, “that’s the likeliest
place to find the sort of men who would leave their horses
to freeze. ...

He promised again.

When we came out we noticed there were blankets in
the sleigh and Jack put them on the horses.

Mother’s indignation flamed still higher, “think of
that—and yet we call horses brutes. That’s what liquor-.
does to a man,—makes him forget that someone is de-
pending on him and many a man has forgotten his wife
and family, just the same way.”

That night I did not get out with Bertha, for I had to
go to bed early, on account of the early start, which we
must make. I was very happy over our purchases. There
were moccasins for everyone. Mine had a design in blue
and red beads with red duffel to line them with; wool to
knit stockings; a dress pattern for Lizzie; a new lamp,
the biggest one I had even seen. It would have red
flannel in its bowl] when it was set up. Writing paper and
an envelope of pen points, 292’s, and some stubs for Will,
who wrote with his pen held between his little finger and
the one next to it, in a very dashing way, which I would
have gladly copied if I could. There were dresses for the
three girls, and mine was the color I loved, a crimson
cashmere and the buttons were clouded pearl.

Mother was a very careful buyer and knew that the

164 CLEARING IN THE WEST

best quality is the cheapest in the end. She had a great
love for good materials. “Even if your dress is old and
patched,” she would say, “‘you can still have pride in it, if
it is of good material.”

There was only one regret when we got home and
that was that she had bought nothing for herself. But
she made very light of it. However, the first load of
grain that George took in, he bought her a dress length of
Henrietta cloth, with passementerie trimmings, out of
his own money.

That morning when we drove out of Brandon, with the
sleigh crunching the newly fallen snow and the east red-
dening behind the Sand Hills, toothed with pines along
the top, I was in a high state of exhilaration, and even on
good terms with Jack, and prepared to admit he was a
very smart boy for seventeen. A few rags of clouds idled
above the Sand Hills to the east, holding the color of the
sunrise.

The great yellow Court House with pale lights shining
in half a dozen upper windows, threw its blue shadow
over US as We passed and a heavier shadow on my elation,
for I knew there was a man in a cell there who was going
to be hanged the day after Christmas. He had come home
drunk and shot his wife, while she was ironing and he
was sorry for doing it. He told the Judge he didn’t know
why he had done it. I thought of him for many miles,
and prayed that he might find peace for his soul, and go
into his Maker’s presence unafraid. God would under-
stand better than the Judge, and do whatever should be
done for him, when he passed over. The liquor business
was a curse on people and I had a guilty feeling about it.
We were all to blame someway, but this poor fellow was
the one who had to take the punishment. My eyelashes
began to freeze down, so I knew I had to stop thinking
about him, and asked Jack to let me get out and run
behind for a while; I said my feet were getting cold.

CHAPTER XX
CHRISTMAS DAY

CHRISTMAS was a jolly time that year. We had spruce
boughs, brought from the Sandhills, across the doors and
windows, and streamers of red tissue paper and red and
green balls, made from tissue paper cut in circles, folded
and sewed together. Mrs. Lundy had showed Hannah
how to make these, when Hannah had stayed with her in
the summer holidays. Mr. and Mrs. Lundy had a store
about a mile east of Millford.

I remember particularly the apple-jelly tarts that we
had at Christmas and how delicious they were. The
apple-jelly was bright red in color, for snow apples were
now sold in Mr. Lundy’s store and mother had used only
the parings and cores for the jelly, and the other part
was made into apple sauce. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Burnett,
Nina and Frankie were our guests that year. A long
table was set and no one had to wait for the second
table.

Mrs. Burnett was a pretty woman with hazel eyes
and a fair skin and the most beautiful clothes I had ever
seen. She had a dolman of smoke gray brocaded velvet
and a black grosgrain silk dress with bugle trimming, and
a gold bar brooch set with pearls, and ear-rings to match.
She was the daughter of a well-known Montreal family
and must have found the life she was now living a sad
contrast to her life in the city. But she made light of the
hardships of the prairie. “Tf only we could keep the
bread from freezing” she complained once. “I cannot
make very good bread anyway, but it’s worse when it
freezes. Even when I wrap it in Frank’s fur coat, it
freezes.” I was not old enough to fully appreciate her gal-
lantry of spirit but when I heard her singing to her

165

166 CLEARING IN THE WEST

children, “Grandpa will come with the Wo-Wo and take
us away from the cold,” I knew she was singing it to
keep up her own spirits too.

Christmas Day has always been flavored to me with
the pound cake and apple-jelly tarts of those first days in
Manitoba.

The front-room always got a new coat of white-wash
on the log walls at Christmas, and everything was
scoured as white as sand or soap could make it. The
hand-knit Jace curtains, brought from Ontario, were
washed and starched and stretched on home-made frames,
so they would hang straight and reach the floor. Short
curtains were considered slightly indecent. The two long
widths of rag carpet in bright stripes with orange warp
were brought out and laid on the white floor, with the
good mats, one hooked and one braided. The home-made
lounge had a covering of dark maroon canton flannel and
was well supplied with patch work cushions, crazy pat-
tern of silks and satins and two log cabins, one made of
“stuff pieces”, the other one of prints. There were two
book-cases made with spools, painted black, and set with
shelves and a “what-not’” of five shelves, on which stood
china ornaments, a shell box, with a green plush pin-
cushion on the top, apples filled with cloves, and cups
and saucers, (honorably retired from active service be-
cause of cracks, or missing handles, but with these de-
fects tactfully concealed in the way they were placed),
colored glass mugs, and on the top, a bouquet of prairie
grasses, set in a frosted glass vase, a lace pattern on deep
blue. I remember it well, for I broke it years later, when
bouncing a ball, on the floor. Who would have thought a
yarn ball would bounce so high?

When the weather got cold, the kitchen stove had to
be brought into the big room, and it was a family grief
when this change had to be made. If the weather did
not come down too hard, the stove was kept out until
after Christmas. Later when the storm doors and
windows were added, and a bigger heater bought, a fine

CHRISTMAS DAY 167

big barrel of a stove, with a row of mica windows around
its middle, through which the coals glowed with all the
colors of a sunset, the kitchen stove remained in the
kitchen all winter.

But even when the kitchen stove was in the middle of
the big room, there was a cheerful roominess about it.
The woodbox papered with pictures of the Ice Palace, in
Montreal, (Family Herald Supplement) when covered
with two boards over which a quilt was spread made a
nice warm seat and when we got the hanging lamp from
Brandon, with a pale pink shade, on which a brown deer
poised for a leap across a chasm, through which a green
stream dashed in foam on the rocks, the effect was
Magical and in the pink light the white-washed walls
were softened into alabaster.

We had two new pictures now, enlarged photographs
of father and mother in heavy oak frames with a gilt
edge, done by a travelling artist, who drove a team of
mules and carried a few lines of tinware. Every family
in the neighborhood had taken advantage of his easy
plan to secure a lasting work of art. You paid only for
the frame and received the picture entirely free though
this offer might be withdrawn any minute for he was
doing this merely to get his work known. He said there
was no nicer way to give one’s parents a pleasant sur-
prise, and the pictures would be delivered in time for
Christmas. When they came, we all had a surprise.
We had thought that the seven dollars and thirty-five
cents paid for both frames but we were wrong. Each
one cost that amount and even at that the artist was
losing money. The pictures were accepted and hung on
the log walls, and in the declivities behind them were
kept tissue paper patterns, news-paper clippings, and
other semi-precious documents, thus relieving the con-
gestion in the real archives, lodged in the lower regions
of the clock, where notes, grain-tickets, tax receipts were
kept.

After the Christmas dinner of turkey and plum pud-

168 CLEARING IN THE WEST

ding, the men sat and talked of the trouble Louis Reil was
causing. He had come back from Montana, where he
had been teaching school and was now in Saskatchewan,
stirring up the half-breeds and Indians and inciting them
to make raids on the white settlers.

“Why don’t they arrest him now, and get him safely
in jail before someone is killed”? Mother was greatly
disturbed over the situation. “I can’t sleep,” she said,
“thinking of the poor women there, frightened to go to
sleep at night. They say he has given guns to the Indians
and there will be another massacre like there was in
Minnesota.”

Frank Burnett was indignant that the Government
had not sent an armed force, just as soon as the trouble
began.

“Uniforms would settle the trouble,’ he said, “the red
coats and the flash of steel, a few guns fired and the
half-breeds and Indians would know there was law in the
country. Riel should be hanged anyway for the murder
of Thos. Scott.”

I wanted to talk. Mr. Schultz had told us about it in
school. The half-breeds and Indians had a grievance, a
real one. The settlers were crowding in on them, their
land was being surveyed over again, and divided into
squares like ours. They had long narrow lots, as they had
along the Red and Assiniboine, so they could live side by
side, and now a hew arrangement of land was being
made and they were afraid their land was going to be
taken from them. When they sent letters to Ottawa, they
got no replies.

I knew how they felt. I had often asked for ex-
planations and got the prescribed 19th century dusty
answer, “because I say so—that’s all the reason you
need’. How I hated it! And how unfair I felt it to be!
The Government officials were treating the Indians the
same way.

I knew the government was to blame but I would not
be allowed to say it, and if I did get it said, I might get

CHRISTMAS DAY 169

Mr. Schultz into trouble. Mother would feel he was
undermining our respect for authority.

But much to my delight, Hannah came forward and
defended the half breeds. Hannah was always listened
to when she spoke. She had what I lacked, a quiet and
dignified way of expression.

“The country belonged to the Indians and half-
breeds,” she said in her even voice. “We must not for-
get that. I know they have made little use of it and must
yield it to white settlers, in time, but there’s enough
territory for everyone if it is handled right, and they
could be easily appeased and satisfied.”

She told about the new survey, about the delay in
getting the patents out for the land the half-breeds had
proved-up on, about the slaughter of the buffalo, the
Indians’ source of food, and clothing.

Hannah was fifteen then, with a fine presence, fair
skin, a round face, and fine large greenish-blue eyes, and
abundant bright brown hair, inclined to curl. She had
been wiping dishes behind the stove and came out with a
plate in one hand, and a flour-sack tea towel in the other.
Her face was flushed and her eyes bright and to me she
looked like Joan of Arc. I was very proud of her, but I
knew there was a sudden tightening of the atmosphere.
Even now, men do not like to be taught by women, but
at that time for a girl of fifteen to presume to have an
opinion, was against all tradition. However, Hannah
had a prestige all her own.

She went on. “It is not the Catholic church, and it is
not Louis Riel, who is causing the trouble—it is the
stupidity of the Government at Ottawa, and if settlers
are killed by the Indians their’s will be the guilt. A few
words of explanation, a few concessions and peace could
be restored.

“My God”! exclaimed Frank Burnett in real concern,
“that’s hot talk, Hannah, you’ve said enough to hang you
in some countries. If you were in Russia, you would be
shot for a Nihilist, my girl.”

170 CLEARING IN THE WEST

My mother was too much amazed to speak. If I had
said half of what Hannah had, she would know what to
do with me, but Hannah, quiet, dignified Hannah, the
image of her own mother, Margaret Fullerton McCurdy,
could not be sent upstairs in disgrace.

Hannah went on wiping the dishes with great com-
posure. She had said what she wanted to say and now
withdrew from the conversation. Her hearers had heard
the truth, and they could take it or leave it. Responsi-
bility had passed from her to them.

Mr. Burnett continued the argument. “I am afraid
there is bad work going on at Northfield School’, he said.
“I gather that is where Hannah gets her ideas. This
man Schultz is a German; he has no love for British
institutions and 1s using his position as a teacher to
undermine the children’s respect for authority. We'll
have to look into this. We'll have to call a meeting of the
trustees.”

My heart stood still. Had we involved our teacher in
some trouble that might lead to his losing his job?

They all began to talk; and I could feel a hostile tide
of opinion gathering and sweeping ahead of it all good
sense and reason and it seemed to me I would have to
speak, no matter what happened. Will would listen to
me anyway. I went over and stood before him.

“Will,” I said, “I want to talk, make them keep
quiet.”

“Nellie has something on her mind,” Will called out
in his good humored way. “It is not often this poor
tongue-tied child wants to talk, and she should get her
chance on Christmas day, of all times.”

Mother rose up to protest, but Will waved her back.

“Let the kid talk,” he said, “talk won’t hurt anyone.
It’s the things we don’t say that hurt us, I know.”

Then came the ordeal, when the silence fell on the
room. I have faced audiences who were hostile since
then and encountered unfriendly glances, but the
antagonism here was more terrible, being directed, not

CHRISTMAS DAY 171

as much against what I had to say, as against the fact that
1 dared to say anything.

I addressed Will, as people air their views in letters
addressed to the Editor. “The Government is like the
Machine Company, Will”, I said. “The half-breeds are
dissatisfied with the way they are treated, they are afraid
they are going to be put off their farms, just as we were
afraid when the tongue of the binder broke, and we saw
we were going to lose our crop. The half-breeds have
written letters, and sent people to see the Government
and asked them to send out someone to straighten out
their troubles just as you, Will, wrote letters to the
Company and asked them to send an expert, who would
put the binder in good shape. The Government won’t
answer the half-breeds, won’t notice them, won’t talk to
them—and the only word they send them is a saucy
word-——‘“‘what we will send you will be an army; we'll put
you in your place.” Just as the Machine Company wrote
to us a saucy letter saying that it was our own fault if
the binders broke, and they couldn’t supply us with
brains. It’s the same spirit. We should understand how
the half-breeds feel. That’s all I want to say,” and before
anyone could say a word, I left the room, glad to get
away.

Hannah came out soon after and we went upstairs and
took counsel together. ‘Don’t worry”, she said to me
in her comforting way, ‘“Mr. Schultz is safely away at
Pelican Lake and won’t be back for two weeks. Two
weeks is quite a long time—they’ll cool off before that,
father said there was a lot of truth in what we said,
but they talked him down.”

“What did Will say?” I asked anxiously.

“Oh, Will just laughed about us and said we had put
the case well, but mother thinks we are in the same class
as Guy Fawks who put the stick of dynamite under the
House of Parliament, and she says she will go to the
trustees herself, if no one else will.”

Then I had something to worry over, J begged her

172 CLEARING IN THE WEST

to tell me how this would be prevented. She shook her
head, but her coolness comforted me.

“The Lord will provide’, she said airily, “Listen! the
dogs are barking! Someone is coming.”

She thawed an eye-hole in the frozen window and
looked out. “People from Millford”, she called back to
me cheerfully, “cheer up, brother Ridley—we won’t be
shot today.”

Visitors were never more welcome to us than they
were at that moment, for we knew that mother would
rise to the occasion and the subject would be dropped for
the day, at least.

It was no wonder people liked to come to our house,
for mother was never happier than when she was pour-
ing a cup of tea, and serving a visitor with some of her
own good cooking.

When she would fall into low spirits, the first few
years we were in the country and sit drooping and sad
under the pall of loneliness that wrapped us around for
many months in the year, Hannah and I used to look
eagerly across the waste of snow, hoping we would see
someone coming. Sometimes we would climb to the top
of the stable to get a wider view; and the one on the
ground would solemnly ask the one who had gone aloft,
“Sister Ann, Sister Ann, do you see anybody coming?”

Once when I was on the ground and asked the ques-
tion of Hannah, who was balancing herself on the ridge
pole of the stable, she held her two arms up to get the
breeze and solemnly replied.

“T see the snow drifting,
And feel the wind shifting,
And e’er the sun is higher
A traveller draweth higher,
So let our gloom be lifting
Hence, minion, mend the fire!
And tell your angel mother
To cease from idle weeping
And let the tea be steeping.”

CHRISTMAS DAY 173

I never knew whether Hannah made up her rhymes
carefully beforehand, or like Alan-Bane in the Lady of
the Lake, had the gift of minstrelsy. There was no way
of finding out either.

I can’t remember whether I went down stairs or not
that day. My heart was too heavy with dread to enjoy
anything. For if my mother said she would go to the
trustees, she would. She had a sense of duty that would
drive her through fire or water. I knew she was wrong
this time and that hurt me, for I loved my mother and
understood the working of her mind. She was above all
things, loyal to her own. Her family, her relatives, her
country. She was critical of us, and set forth our faults
in plain language, for she was anxious to make us what
she thought we ought to be, but if anyone else found
fault with us, she would spring to our defence, without
question. She saw nothing but virtue in her own
relatives or at least admitted nothing but virtue and had
a fine scorn for men or women who criticized their hus-
bands or wives to outsiders, or slandered any member
of their own family connection. Family loyalty was
woven into her life’s pattern. “It’s an ill bird that fouls
its own nest”, was her comment when anyone tried to tell
her their family troubles.

So it was with her country. Great Britain was the
greatest and best and most God-fearing country in the
world, and Queen Victoria was the hand-maiden of the
Lord. Mother had seen her once in her widow’s mourn-
ing, driving in an open carriage through the streets of
Dundee and loved her with a passionate devotion.

So she would be very high-minded in her visit to the
trustees, when she went to complain of Mr. Schultz’
teaching, and she might even come to the school and
reprimand Mr. Schultz before us all. He would be very
polite with her, for I know he had a high regard for her,
but the scene would be too terrible to think of. She
wouldn’t reason, or listen to reason, for her mind was
made up. And it would end in a high note of tragedy

174 CLEARING IN THE WEST

for she would walk out with her head up, calling on
Hannah and me to follow!

And what would we do? Knowing her to be wrong?

And yet how can anyone desert their mother! I
knew then what Christ meant when he said that is just
what you may have to do if you swear allegiance to the
truth. But I knew I wasn’t ready for this.

If ever I prayed in my life, I prayed then that the
decision would not have to be made, that somehow it
would not come to this!

Mother had had one serious illness since we came to
Manitoba, an illness that came on suddenly, almost like a
“stroke” and I was fearful that the excitement of a visit
to the school might bring a repetition, and this dark and
stifling fear was on me day and night during the holidays
that year, and even when sleigh riding down the steep
bank of the creek north of the house, when Hannah and I
played out each fine day. I loved the swift rush of the
runners over the hard drifts and the impact of cold air
on my face, with an occasional spill at the bottom when
the sleigh shot on without us, I loved it for it made me,
for one brief moment, forget.

CHAPTER XXI
A Visit FroM THE TEACHER

WHEN school began in January I knew we were skating
on thin ice, the break might come any day and I was so
worried over it I could not sleep or eat. Mother was sure
I was growing too fast and saw to its that I drank a
quart of milk each day, which had no effect on me, except
to keep me from Jiking milk all my life. I was sure she
was going to carry out her threat of visiting the school
for I never knew mother to break her word. That was
another motif in her life’s pattern. How I wished she
were less conscientious, though I remembered how I
gloried in the story of her going to the Settlement School
on the Common, where Will! attended when he was a little
boy, before the Public schools came in Ontario and
reprimanding the teacher, a bad tempered old soldier, for
his cruelty to another boy. Will had come home in tears
because of the unmerciful beating given to his little
friend, an orphan boy, who lived with his uncle, and
mother had gone in all haste to the log school with fire in
her eye and put the fear of death into the brutal teacher.
I thought this was a very fine thing for her to do, and I
knew she was quite as conscientious now in her intention
of protesting against what she though was false teach-
ing at Northfield.

My general listlessness and lack of appetite diverted
her mind and I tried to feel that I was a martyr in the
cause of freedom, but I couldn’t get any sensation from
my state of mind, but a sort of dull despair, and when I
was kept home from school, the sorrows of life over-
flowed my young soul.

I knew Hannah had a better philosophy of life than
I had and vainly tried to lay hold on it.

175

176 CLEARING IN THE WEST

“Don’t worry over anything before it happens and
don’t worry then. Let things happen—if they must, you
can’t stop them anyway. You’re foolish to be losing
your time and energy when you should be studying.
Work so hard, you can’t think.”
~# Looking back at it, I wonder what power nineteenth
century parents had over their children and how did they
hold it. I was not a particularly meek young person,
but I could not stand up to my mother, even knowing
that she was wrong.

But one day deliverance came as easily as a sunbeam
comes in at a window. I was out tying in the cows and
doing up the evening chores, for the three boys were away
to Brandon with loads of wheat, when I saw Hannah
coming down the snowy road, with Bert Ingram and Mr.
Schultz. I wondered if Mr. Schultz was coming in. Had
he heard that mother was on the war path, and had come
over to see her? I knew she would be polite to him, if
he came in—that was another part of her pattern.—“Let
it never be said that you were ill-mannered in your own
house.” I stayed out in the stable until I was all but
frozen. When at last I went in, what a sight met my
eyes!

Mr. Schultz sat beside the stove, in the big rocking
chair, drinking a steaming cup of beef-broth. He greeted
me affectionately. ‘I came over to see you, Nellie’, he
said, with his ready smile. ‘Hannah tells me you are
not feeling well and I am a bit under the weather myself,
so I came over to get a bit of your mother’s good nursing
too. I just couldn’t go back to a cold house tonight and
frozen bread. Newt Thompson is hauling out wheat, too.

Mr. Schultz lived with Newton Thompson on the farm
south west of us. They did their own cooking.

“If you are not feeling better tomorrow morning”,
mother said, spreading a blanket over his knees, “I’ll keep
you in bed. Hannah can look after the school for you
very well and a day in bed will break your cold. Hannah,

A VISIT FROM THE TEACHER 177

put the black pot full of coals upstairs in the boys’ room—
it will take the chill off the air.”

We had a wonderful evening under the hanging lamp
with its fringe of crystal beads.

After a hot dinner and a dose of mother’s cough
syrup of honey, butter and vinegar, Mr. Schultz declared
himself to be on the highway of recovery. He said he
did not believe he would need the foot-bath of mustard
water and the reason for his reluctance came out later.
He had holes in his socks, and did not want to let that
be known. “Maggie would kill me if she knew I was
going around like this’, he laughed. “Maggie”, was
Mrs. Schultz who lived on their homestead near Pelican
Lake.

Then mother decided that he must have a new pair of
socks and she would finish a pair she had on the needles.
“This is the last of my yarn”, she said wistfully, “my own
carding and spinning and I will be glad to have you take
them.”

“T will be proud to own them’, he said as he thanked
her warmly. “Proud indeed, but I will not Jet them be
worn out, for they are a symbol of an era in our history .
that is passing. Hand work is being superseded by ma-
chinery, and the fine creative household arts will be
forgotten.”

She tossed him the finished one, as she set to work to
take off the toe of its mate and he examined it admiringly.
“Women are very resourceful’, he said, as he watched
her bringing the other one to completion. ‘They have
seized all the resources at their hands and fashioned __
them to human needs, with great cleverness. Can you
knit?” he asked me suddenly.

“Not very well”, I confessed—‘“I am afraid I do not
like it.”

“Learn all you can from your mother, Nellie,” he said.
“You'll be proud of her skill when you grow up, you'll be
glad to boast of it. Just think of what these socks mean.
Wool on a sheep’s back, converted into socks on a man’s

178 CLEARING IN THE WEST

feet, and all done by one pair of skillful hands. And
you didn’t bring your spinning wheel or loom, Mrs.
Mooney? Too bad, they would be great treasures in forty
years or less. You would be asked to loan them for art
exhibits and it would be a great source of interest for
the young women to see how you made cloth, and set the
patterns. Why didn’t you bring them?” he asked, after
& pause.

Mother hesitated—it was a tender subject. “I wanted
to”, she said, “for I loved doing these things, and never
was happier than when J set the shuttle in the loom, but
Will was against it—he said we were getting away from
all this. I know how the young people feel too, though
it hurts me to see it. They are a little bit ashamed of
home-made stuff. They want machine-made clothes.
They are dressier and more the style. Hand-made cloth
will wear ten times as long, but that’s not what they
want....It was a kindness too, on Willie’s part—he knew
Thad plenty to do without weaving, but weaving was not
work—it was my pleasure—because... .”

“Because you were creating something’, Mr. Schultz
finished for her, “something beautiful as well as useful.”

She nodded her head, and went on with her knitting
in silence.

The conversation turned to the trouble in the North
West, but fortunately mother was busy counting stitches
as she finished the sock, and so said nothing.

“It was too bad the half-breeds sent for Riel,” Mr.
Schultz said, “he was safely away in Montana, teaching
school and doing very well, for he’s well fitted for teach-
ing. But in their distress they turned to him, and asked
him, coaxed him to come. He can talk well, and write
well, and they knew he is sincere. If the Government
had had the good sense to send out a man who would ex-
plain away their troubles, they would have never thought
of Riel. I’ve heard him speak many times, and talked
to him and I believe he is sincere, but he is flighty, and
emotional, and fanatical. Sincerity may be a curse to

A VISIT FROM THE TEACHER 179

people, when there is not good judgment to guide it.
Look at Bloody Mary, she was certainly sincere, but that
sincerity took the form of killing Protestants. She be-
believed she was doing them a good turn killing their
bodies, and thus saving their souls from heresy.”

He told us about the first Rebellion in 1870. He had
heard it discussed in Kildonan, where he had taught
before he came to us. Kildonan being near to Winnipeg
was in the affected area, and the events of 1870 were
fresh in the minds of the people there.

“The trouble was stirred up largely because of the
overbearing ways of some of the government’s agents,”
he said. “They belittled the half-breeds, sneered at them,
they were “dirty half-breeds.” Letters were written back
to the papers in Toronto making fun of the natives, by
some members of the Snow Commission, who had been
sent out to investigate conditions. Insulting letters,
smart-aleck letters, the writers of which did not think
the half-breeds would ever see them, but the printed page
has wings. Good manners would have saved the whole
situation, just as good manners will hold a home to-
gether and bad manners can destroy a home.

The ill-feeling between England and Scotland was

kept alive the same way. ... Words, words—the tongue
ig an unruly member. You know what the Bible says
‘about a soft answer turning away wrath’... . It does.”

He turned to my father.

“Strange isn’t it, Mr. Mooney,” he said, ‘that after
more than eighteen hundred years of Christian teach-
ing, there is so little of real Christianity in the world.
Governments still think a bullet is the best argument.”

“It will come,” father said slowly, “but we all have to
work for it—line upon line, precept upon precept, here a
little and there a little, and you are doing something
yourself, I can see. Get the minds of children set in the
right mould and in one generation the world could be
changed.”

180 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I remember the glamorous happiness of that evening.
My burden was gone. I was no longer afraid.

Father liked a bowl of gruel before going to bed—
it warmed the marrow in his bones he said. That night,
the black pot of oatmeal porridge was put on early, and
simmered on the back of the stove, while we talked, and
at ten o’clock we all had a bowl of gruel, flavored with
nutmeg, and piping hot.

Mr. Schultz declared he was going to institute this
fine custom at once, “but you’ll have to show me how you
do it,” he said to mother. ‘‘There’s a trick in this, I never
tasted gruel like this. The kind of gruel the boys in
Squeers’ School got was described by Dickens as ‘diluted
pincushions’, and I always thought that was about what
it was everywhere. I’ve learned something tonight. This
is delicious.”

The evening ended on a high note. I was very proud
of my family which is surely one of the most satisfying
emotions a child can have. That night I noticed for the
first time, that nutmeg is a sweet, significant, honest,
homely flavor, and to this day, it brings back soothing
memories. It is the incense that rises from the happy
hearths of contented people, and has in it the solidity of
the soil, the blessing of the hour of rest, the essence of
goodwill and neighborliness, Nutmeg! I rank it with
lilacs after rain, and wild rose leaves pressed in the pages
of an old school book!

I went to school the next day feeling as well as I ever
did in my life.

After Mr. Schultz goodwill visit, life settled into a
pleasant round. Nap had quite recovered and grown to
be a bigger dog than he had been before, and now, almost
the size of his Newfoundland ancestor, he was the finest
sleigh-dog in the neighborhood.

John Rae, a neighbor, for whom Mother baked bread,
had made me a little hand sleigh with steel-shod runners,
and painted a dazzling red, with my initials in black
paint, on the middle of the top, and I had an elaborate

A VISIT FROM THE TEACHER 181

harness for Nap, made by myself from straps and snaps
taken from old horse harness. Harness making oc-
cupied a large place in my life at this time, and I was
quite handy with a canvas needle, linen thread, bees wax
and binding twine; and when some one gave me a string
of shining bells to buckle around Nap’s ample chest, I
felt I had a very creditable turn-out. I have always felt
that a real good harness-maker was lost to the world
when I began to do other things.

With this fine equipment, I carried on a very nice
freighting business from Millford each Saturday morn-
ing.

I rode going to Millford, with my moccasined feet
stuck under the cross bar of the sleigh to hold me on, as
Nap galloped over the drifts. But coming home, with a
load of groceries tightly roped on the sleigh I walked
behind and carried the mail in my leather book-bag slung
over my shoulder. Always there was the Family Herald,
with its great wealth of reading, from Family Remedies
and the Etiquette Department to the continued story and
the Irish News for father.

Remembering his delight and interest in the patheti-
cally bare little colums, given each week, a sorrow comes
over me, aS I write these words. Why didn’t we sub-
scribe for an Irish newspaper for him? It would have
pleased him like nothing else. This business of re-
membering is heavy work at times, so many things come
back out of the past to stab me. I know my father was
bitterly homesick for his Irish glens, after we came to
Manitoba. It was not the stony soil of the Garafraxa
he remembered with longing, it was the misty bogs of
Tipperary with the little hummocks standing up like
islands in a silver sea; he often told me there was music
in the very air of Ireland, crickets in the grass, the
whirring of wings at nightfall, and more than that, a
gentle soft piping that is both merry and sad, and can
turn the very heart in you. I asked him if this was the
music of the little people who dance on the leaves and he

182 CLEARING IN THE WEST

said he was not rightly sure, but he had heard it many a
time.

I do not know why we did not persuade him to go
back to see the old home. Of course, the expense was a
barrier at first, but good years came later, and money was
no longer the question that decided everything. But we
thought of Ireland as a poverty-stricken country, mouldy
with rain, a country of tumble-down cabins, tragic old
people, rebellious young people, waiting for a boat to take
them to America, and we thought he was well away from
it. But I know now that to the end of his life he was
under the spell of the mystic beauty of his native land,
and in his dreams he saw again the blue hills of Tipperary
and smelled the turf fires burning in the bog.

But I was telling about our enjoyment of the weekly
newspaper. The continued story was really the high
point of interest for we had a whole week to speculate on
the development of the plot. There was one story that
shook our neighborhood to its foundation. It was called
Saved, or the Bride’s Sacrifice, and concerned two beauti-
ful girls—Jessie, fair as a lily, and Helen with blue
black hair and lustrous eyes as deep as night. They each
loved Herbert, and Herbert, being an obliging young fel-
low, not wishing to hurt anyone’s feelings, married one
secretly and hurriedly by the light of a guttering candle,
in a peasant’s hut, (Jessie), and one openly with peal of
organ and general high jinks, at her father’s baronial
castle, (Helen).

This naturally brought on complications. There were
storms and shipwrecks, and secret meetings in caves,
with the tide rising over the rocks and curlews screaming
in the blast, there were plottings and whisperings; a wo-
man with second sight and one with the evil eye. And
did we love it?

I can remember staggering along through the snow,
behind the sleigh reading the story as I walked and when
I drew near home, members of the family would come out
to shout at me to hurry.

CHAPTER XXII
TROUBLE IN THE NORTH WEST

As the winter wore away, and signs of spring began to
come in the honey combed snow drifts that lowered and
blackened in the soft March winds, we became more and
more agitated by the news that came through from the
North West.

Two women, Mrs. Delaney and Mrs. Gavanlock were
taken prisoners by the Indians and raids had been made
on the settlers’ horses and cattle. The fate of the women
was a shivery subject for conversation. Up to that time
the “trouble” was a vague and abstract state, far away
and impersonal, but now the menace had come out into
the open, and the evil had assumed shape and image;
painted savages, brandishing tomahawks and uttering
blood-curdling cries had swarmed around the lonely and
defenceless farm houses, and overpowered these two wo-
men and carried them away to the Indian teepees some-
where in the wood, holding them as hostages.

The newspapers flared with the news; and every inch
of print was read and re-read by us. The Naismiths
took the Arnprior Chronicle, the Ingrams, the Woodstock
Sentinel, and we had the Owen Sound Advertiser and the
Family Herald. But the news was old when we got it
and that worried us too. Under the strain of anxiety
the neighbors came together more, and there were many
gatherings at our house. When the boys came home
from Brandon, they brought more newspapers and much
oral news. Sometimes they saw the troops going through
on the train, with the cheering crowds at the station.

On the occasion of these gatherings, every wild
scheme was advocated. We should build a fort in Mill-
ford, using the mill for the main room, boring port holes
in the wall for the rifles and putting in flour and bacon

183

184 CLEARING IN THE WEST

and potatoes, in case of a siege. There were four rifles
in the neighborhood and two shot guns. There were per-
sistent rumors of a “rising” at Swan Lake and Marie-
_ apolis on the Indian reserves there.

‘“t My mother stood firmly by her belief that the Indians
would not hurt the women. “Women are safer with
Indians than they would be with some white men,” she
said, but she was talked down by the others, who had
terrible tales to tell of atrocities in Minnesota and it
seems that most of them had relatives who survived that
terrible time.

At that stage in the conversation I was always sent to
bed.

“Hannah, take Nellie to bed—see that she stays
there.”

Now Hannah was a stern and conscientious jailer but
a very pleasant one too.

“Your business and mine is to get on with our school
work, and not be turned aside even by Indians,” she ex-
plained to me one night above the sound of excited voices
in the room below.

“But if the Indians should come, what would we do?”
I begged her to tell me.

“Nothing that we can arrange now,” she said. ‘You
can’t get ready for Indians, but I’m not afraid of Indians;
especially our own Indians who come selling baskets.
They’re friendly and they don’t know anything about
the trouble in Saskatchewan. They can’t read and the
trouble is three hundred miles away. Anyway, it’s in
Saskatchewan and this is Manitoba: now I’ll hear you
your spellings and don’t try to listen to that clatter.
They’re having a good time. It’s as exciting as the
First of July picnic or a barn raising. Jack Naismith
and our Jack are killing Indians by the dozen in their
minds and piling them up like cordwood and it’s not hurt-
ing anyone. I wish Lizzie didn’t have to stay down there
for she hates all this awful talk. But she has to stay to
feed the crowd. You and I are well out of it.”

TROUBLE IN THE NORTH WEST 185

At night when I wakened in fear, dreaming of shriek-
ing savages with burning brands in their hands, I was
comforted and reassured by Hannah’s regular breathing.
No terrifying dream disturbed her rest and I kept telling
myself if the Indians did come to kill us in a red rage
of anger, Hannah would talk them out of it, and mother
would make tea for them and feed them currant buns
and get them persuaded to go back, and make their
baskets and behave themselves.

One day in the early spring the cry arose at Northfield
school] that the Indians were coming! Coming in their
carts in a procession a mile long, Billy Day said. Some-
one had seen them winding around Pelican Lake like a
jointed snake, as far as the eye could see. They were
all in war paint and feathers and their carts were creak-
ing like ten thousand wolves howling and they were
coming this way.

Billy had been staying home to seed, but no one
could stay at home after hearing news like this, so he
came riding on horseback; and rushed into the school,
breathless with haste, and so pale the freckles stoood
out like bran on his face.

Consternation sat on every face as Bill’s excitement
spread.

“Sit down, Bill,” Mr. Schultz said quietly, “school is
in.” :

Bill shouted his message again.

“Yes, I know,” said the teacher unmoved, “they come
every spring, on their way to Brandon. I’ve been ex-
pecting them. These Indians are no relation to the
Indians in Saskatchewan. They are Crees, and ours are
Sioux and they are not friends. They won’t hurt any-
one, certainly they wouldn’t fight for the Crees. Indians
have their friends just like white people.”

“Dad said to tell everyone to get their guns loaded
and shoot to kill,” Bill cried. Things weren’t breaking as
well as he thought.

“Now listen, Bill, and all of you,’ Mr. Schultz’ eyes

186 CLEARING IN THE WEST

glowed now; and pink spots came out on his cheeks, “a
shot fired would be fatal. These Indians are friendly. I
know Indians. They are peaceful people until they get
frightened and you know how even a quiet dog will bite
when taken by surprise. They are like that. The Custer
massacre happened because some white fool shot at three
Indians, who came to a house to ask for something to eat;
and the Indians got frightened and shot back. My wife
and the two little boys are alone, in a house right beside
the trail, where the Indians pass and IJ know they are
safe. I think I will let you all go home and tell your
people not to be afraid, just buy their baskets the same
as ever, and give them tea or whatever they want; and
don’t let on you know there is any trouble.”

We rushed for our things and came out into the sun-
shine. Bill was in a rage at the turn of affairs. “The
teacher is yellow,” he said, “he’s afraid, that’s what he is.
My dad ain’t, you bet, and he’ll take a shot at the red-
skins; he says, there’s only one good Indian and he’s a
dead one.”

It was one of those breathing days in spring, when
mist comes from the soil, and the sun draws the young
plants out of the ground. There was a palpitation in the
air, a sense of movement and growth. Every sound was
magnified in the still air. The hens’ cackle and the
rooster’s crowing in Davy Dick’s farm yard a mile from
us, sounded clearly on the air. Tommy Kennedy put his
ear to the ground and motioned to us to keep quiet. He
sprang up hastily.

“Gol, they’re comin’,” he shouted, “I hear carts
squealin’ in the hills, but they’re only a few, and they’re
not comin’ this way.”

Mr. Schultz came out bare-headed and spoke to us
again. “Now don’t get excited,” he said, “remember this
country all belonged to the Indians once and they see us
as usurpers. We took their land and drove out their
best friend, the buffalo. Use your imaginations now,
and think what you would feel like, if you saw another

TROUBLE IN THE NORTH WEST 187

race living on the land that had been yours; another
color; other ways of living; feeling themselves superior.
T’ll stay here and talk to them—they will have to come
this way and don’t let a gun be seen; go now, young
messengers of good will, you have a real duty to
perform.”

We went; we raced like the wind, watching the Tiger
Hills, south of us, for some sign of the long caravan of
creaking carts, that Bill had said was on its way.

We were tingling with excitement and thrilling with
a sense of adventure. Now we knew how the heroes of
the Fiery Cross could run so far. Our feet were shod
with speed, that ate up the miles.

Nap met us at the usual place, and even he was
bristled up and barked at us. He had something on his
mind too; but we hadn’t time to bother with him, beyond
yelling at him to shut up.

We were half way from Will’s house to ours before
we noticed strange objects in our yard, Indian carts—
Indian ponies hitched to carts and strange dogs.

Nap barked out again a “didn’t I tell you” bark.

What would we do? Hide down by the creek in the
bushes? Run back to the school? We paused for a
moment, irresolute. No, there was only one thing to do,
we must go on. We saw there were three carts
and the ponies had wandered over to the oat stack and
were pulling out the straws. Nap bristled up to twice
his size and stepped like a hackney at the sight of two
Indian dogs with curled tails, under the carts, as
peacefully withdrawn from public affairs as dogs could
very well be, but Nap resented their presence, on his
territory and began a preliminary growl in the back of
his throat.

“There can’t be anything wrong,” Hannah said, but I
could feel my heart beating in my throat. All the stories
I ever heard of Indians and their evil ways came to my
mind. 1 thought of the Donnelly murder in Bedolph and
of how young Jim Donnelly escaped by being at a neigh-

188 CLEARING IN THE WEST

bor’s house that night, the only one of the family to
survive.

But nothing could be more peaceful than the farm
yard that moment. Hens and chickens circled the space
in front of the horse stables, the hens scratching and
calling, and the little balls of feathers coming in like the
spokes of a wheel, a rooster crowed from the top of a
manure pile that steamed in the warm air, cows lay at
ease beside the straw stack, for there was no green
grass yet to tempt them away from the oat straw.

On the three sides of the group of buildings, the creek
ran full between its low banks, with a brown glint in its
swift current. White clouds loitered above us in the
blue sky; every aspect of the day and the place spoke of
peace.

Hannah did not falter in her gait, and I followed her.
When we opened the kitchen door the room seemed to be
full of Indians; at least the floor was covered by them,
for with their blankets and shawls, one squaw, with a
papoose can cover much space; the acrid smell of burned
willow roots and tanned hide filled the air.

On the other side of the stove, with the oven door
open, Mother sat in a rocking chair, with a flannel on her
knee on which lay an Indian baby, a poor little wrinkled
thing with a face like an old man, whimpering softly like
a sick puppy. She was rubbing its chest with goose-
grease. The mother, a young squaw, was on her knees
watching with impassive face.

The table was full of their baskets and the kettle on
the stove was beginning to steam. Lizzie was in the
pantry buttering bread.

“Shut the door, girls,” Mother said, “and come in, and
see what I have. Yes, he’s been sick, poor little fellow,
but I think he’ll be better now. He has had a heavy cold
on his chest, and needs to be more warmly dressed. Now
look, Mary Paul, roll him up this way, so his feet won’t
come out, keep his feet warm and his head cool. Yes,
keep the flannel on him and rub him each night with

TROUBLE IN THE NORTH WEST 189

this; giving him two or three drops like this, see, no more
than this—it will loosen his cough.”

She handed the baby back to his mother and a suc-
cession of appreciative grunts came from the circle. The
young mother said something we did not understand but
her face lost its mask of indifference. She actually smiled
as she took the baby in her arms.

Another squaw came over to where mother sat and
showed a sore ear, moaning as she touched it with her
grimy hand. After the ear had been washed with soap
and water, a few drops of laudanum were put in, and
an onion was put in the ashes to roast, and when it was
well heated through, it was cautiously put on the sore
ear and bandaged with a white rag.

Before the visit was over, it appeared that all of the
squaws were birds with broken pinions. The last one, a
big woman who smoked a short clay pipe, complained
of a pain in her stomach and received a generous draught
of baking soda. The two men were evidently sound or at
least did not reveal their ailments. But they drank cups
of tea with every sign of delight and ate heartily.

It was well on to the middle of the afternoon when
they left—mother bought two baskets from them and
just as they were leaving the sick baby’s mother went
out to her cart and brought in a mat of sweet grass in
which was woven a pattern of porcupine quills, and gave
it to mother.

They went the rounds of the neighborhood, and were
so well fed and showered with gifts of flour, potatoes,
eggs and butter that they must have wondered, if Indians
do wonder, at the sudden warming of hearts that had
taken place. Houses that had been closed and locked to
them, on former visits, while the owners had looked
out from behind the edge of factory cotton blinds,
now were opened hospitably and kettles were boiled and
meat was fried for the visiting delegates. So it came
about that the misdeeds of their brethren in the North
West brought gifts and friendliness to the Indians at

190 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Pelican Lake, and they, very wisely, took the tide, as it
served.

The “risin’” that Bill’s friend had seen coming
round the end of the lake, like a jointed snake, must have
been lost in the labyrinthine hills, for the three carts were
the only Indian visitors until the following autumn, when
the trouble was over.

The day that the sick Indian baby got his rubbing
of goose grease, was April 24th, the day that guns roared
at Fish Creek. ,

The Family Herald were advertising a cheap rate in
their daily paper—three months for $2.00, and I de-
termined to get it. I had a feeling that daily news was
what we needed, in this time of great import. So I sold
my best white duck to Mrs. Kennedy who paid me $1.50
and [ had the other fifty cents (won from Jack on a bet.
He bet I could not finish the stockings IJ was knitting in
a week, and I did, though it nearly killed me, for I was a
slow knitter). I sent away for the paper and I think I
expected to get one each day, for when five of them
arrived on mail day at Millford, not one date any later
than the Weekly Star, I felt a bit cheated, but I carried
one to school each day, still unwrapped, and so the
prestige I hoped to win, was not all lost.

We had a map on the board and followed the troops,
under General Middleton, as well as we could; and talked
long and loud, and earnestly over the daily reports, before
and after school and at the noon hour. Piapot, Pound-
maker, Big Bear, and Louis David Riel and Gabriel
Dumont’s pictures were stuck on the wall with molasses,
furnished by Thos. James Kennedy’s lunch. We dwelt in
the midst of alarms, but no one ever enjoyed it more.

At noon, we played one game and one only. Indians
and soldiers. I was an Indian Chief (Poundmaker) and
had a red and yellow lap-robe for my blanket. Billy
Day led the Free Lances, a force of young bloods who
fired on the Indians at all times, even when we—the
Indians—were holding a parley with the Government

TROUBLE IN THE NORTH WEST 191

forces led by Bert Ingram who was General Middleton.
We had to expect the odd death-tipped arrow from Billy’s
forces, who did not believe in any other means of com-
munication. No talk, no conferences, no truce, just ex-
termination. “If I don’t get him—he gits me” was Billy’s
slogan, and so in this way we had all the excitement of
a three-cornered conflict.

I made a good Poundmaker, for I had the two long
braids of hair, with moccasin laces braided in, and tied at
the ends; and as chief I had many opportunities for
making speeches.

Bert’s forces were very active and spent much time in
throwing up breast work, which meant moving the wood
pile and arranging for port holes for their rifles.

My forces had bows and arrows of home manu-
facture, decorated with tufts of red and blue yarn, and
we beat the tom-toms as we advanced on the Fort and
ki-yied. The tin lids of dinner pails make very good
tom-toms.

While we circled and ambushed and surrendered and
fought and died outside, Hannah sat at her desk, taking
no time for play but improving every dull or shining
minute, as she poured over Lord’s big blue History or
“factored” great long phrases of x’s and y’s and z’s with
a sprinkling of a’s, b’s and c’s.

I felt a bit guilty about the time I was spending as
Poundmaker, but it was too much fun to forego, and I
loved making up his speeches about waving grass and
running streams, waning moons and setting suns, with
plenty of references to the White Queen across the shore-
less waters.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE TRAGIC ENDING

WHEN in July the news came that the North West
rebellion was over and Riel captured a great wave of
thanksgiving swept over Western Canada, not entirely
free from a bit of disappointment that our excitement
would now die down. However, there was still the fertile
field of speculation as to the final outcome.

The die-hards cried out for blood. The death of
Thomas Scott in the first Rebellion, fifteen years before,
must be avenged; no mercy had been shown to him. But
the moderate party, of which Mr. Schultz was the leader,
believed that no good end could be served by Riel’s death,
for he would thereby become a martyr in the eyes of the
Metis, his followers, and great bitterness would result,
and surely if there had been wrong-doing on the part of
the half-breeds, they were now broken, scattered and
utterly defeated. They were our own people after all and
it was always the part of wisdom to show mercy in the
hour of triumph.

Mr. Schultz did not think that the Government had
any desire for further retaliation, and thought they would
have been relieved if Riel had escaped after the final rout
at Batoche. It was rumoured that he might easily have
done so, and made his way unmolested back to his home
across the border in Montana. But he did not want to
escape, for it was his desire to defend the half-breeds in
an open court where he would have the ear of the whole
country.

Each week we read the Family Herald and the Bran-
don Times for the last word on the situation and waited
anxiously for the trial which was going to be held in
Regina where Riel was imprisoned.

192

THE TRAGIC ENDING 193

Riel wanted to make his own defence and refused the
offer of counsel. But in spite of this the Government sent
two famous lawyers from Montreal to defend him, and
they without consulting him, decided to enter the plea of
insanity as the surest way of saving his life, and there
is but little doubt that they would have succeeded but for
Riel himself, who, stung by their arguments, forgot his
intention of presenting the case for the half-breeds and
spent all his time trying to establish the fact that he was
perfectly sane.

He could have saved himself, we thought, if he had
carried out his original plan, but, as it was, he made a
poor impression upon the court and alienated public
sympathy. The whole trial was a tragedy of cross pur-
poses, and the verdict of the court was that he was guilty
of treason. The date of his execution was set for October
but on appeal to the Judge twenty-nine days more of life
were granted to the condemned man to allow him to finish
the Memoirs he was writing. He wrote a letter to the
Judge thanking him for this favor and praying that one
year for each day would be added to his life for this act of
clemency.

We did not believe he would be hanged. A reprieve
would surely come. We had read about reprieves and a
very thrilling business it was with a dishevelled rider,
on a foaming horse galloping up to the foot of the gal-
lows waving a document and shouting “The pardon of the
King.”

As the seventh of November drew near we talked of
nothing else as we walked the two miles night and morn-
ing to school in the crisp autumn weather. We had con-
vinced ourselves that Riel would be pardoned basing our
hopes on the fact that a Commission had been sent out
to the half-breeds and all the difficulties had been settled
so we argued that Riel and his followers had not asked
anything unreasonable, and we knew that the French
people were asking for his pardon. A reprieve would
surely come and we loved to picture the scene though

194 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Hannah said there would not be a galloping horse, that
was all out of date. The pardon would come by tele-
graph if it came at all.

But we set that aside. Perhaps the wires would be
down. We were so sure that a reprieve, or a pardon,
would come that we arranged the scene and if we could
have been free from the restraining presence of the
teacher for one noon hour we would have acted it. Joe
Rothwell had his pony and he would have ridden in with
a clatter of hooves from a mile down the road, rising in
his stirrups, and shouting. He had the best part of all.
We painted the scene with a broad brush.

Dawn in the cold grey jail-yard of the Mounted Police
barracks in Regina, on the morning of November the
seventh. The melancholy procession from the death cell.
The guards pale and wretched, hating their job, hands
trembling, teeth chattering. Louis David Riel pale but
calm with head erect walks to the scaffold and mounts
the steps, without a quiver, disdaining the hand of the
guard who would have helped him. ... He stands aloft, a
gallant figure of a man against the flushing sky... .
When asked if he desires to speak, he shakes his head and
cries “God is my judge and to Him I commit my soul.”
When the bandage is put over his eyes he politely thanks
the hangman and holds it away from his eyes for one
moment while he looks around the landscape and up at the
clouds flecked with sunrise. ... Then pulls it down and
gives his hands to be pinned behind his back and
waits. ... The priest begins the prayer for the passing
soul and the noose is placed over his head... .

A shout goes up from the guard at the Barracks gate
and the hangman stops with his foot on the trap. There
is a thunder of hooves on the frozen ground, and a foam-
ing horse is reined back on his haunches and the rider
flings himself out of the saddle erying one word that
runs from lip to lip, ‘The pardon has come.’

It was a great scene and we were not the only people
who thought and hoped and prayed for this ending but it

THE TRAGIC ENDING 195

was decreed otherwise. The distracted Cabinet at Ottawa
had argued and reasoned and disputed up to midnight the
night before uncertain of what course they should take—
weighing every political advantage, and disadvantage.
When we heard that the sentence had been carried out we
were shocked into silence and we stopped talking about
it.

We read in the Family Herald that there were riots in
the streets of Montreal when the news of the hanging
broke and that the effigy of Sir John A. Macdonald had
been burned on a public square. One of the leaders of a
hostile demonstration was a young Frenchman who said
that he too would have shouldered his rifle if he had been
a half-breed on the banks of the Saskatchewan, and
when the House of Commons assembled he defended the
rebels in a fiery speech that had never been surpassed
in eloquence. In it he taunted the Government that they
had granted everything the half-breeds had asked for but
not until all the harm had been done and the blood spilled
and the bitter wedge put between the two races in
Canada.

His name was Wilfrid Laurier.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE DRAMATEURS

OuR next venture in dramatization was made a year
afterwards in the safe realm of fiction. We decided to
do something for Millford School, five miles away, for
their closing exercises.

Millford School had paid us a visit on several oc-
casions, and on May 24th had beaten us in a spelling
match, (who would have thought that “skilful” would
have only one “‘1’’) ; and by way of return we set about to
produce a scene from “Ten Nights in a Bar-room” to give
at their closing concert on the last day in June.

We had worked more than a month on it, and re-
hearsed it in the shade of the sun-baked woodpile every
day at noon. We made our own properties, had written
our own lines, and now, in our best clothes, carrying our
shoes to save them from the dust of the prairie trail, we
were on our way to fame and glory.

The hot moist air of June was heavily freighted with
the sweetness of wolf willow blossoms, as our little band
of bare-footed pilgrims took their way over the North
trail. Bob, who played the part of Simon Slade, the fat
and prosperous proprietor of the “Sheaf and Sickle”,
carried his own bar, a high bench painted barn-red. The
bottles, of which we carried a generous supply, were dis-
tributed among all the members of the caste, and stuck
out of pockets and dinner pails, giving our band a rakish
and sinister appearance which must have been offset
somewhat by our serious young faces.

I, being poor Fanny Morgan, the drunkard’s wife,
earried, carefuly wrapped in a big newspaper, my
mother’s shawl, which had come from Dundee. It was
a green shawl, with red, yellow, and black lines, making

196

THE DRAMATEURS 197

an elaborate pattern, and it had belonged to my grand-
mother. ... I had not asked my mother for it. I knew I
could not convince her of how badly I needed it, and I
couldn’t ask any of the other women for a shawl when
there was one in my own family. So I took it—and that
lay heavily on my conscience... . but what could I do?
I had to carry the baby in a shawl, when I went to Simon
Slade’s barroom to look for Henry.

We had come straight from school, and walked the five
miles, carrying the remains of our dinner in the tin pails,
and we held our last rehearsal where we stopped to eat,
at the junction of Spring Brook and Oak Creek. But first
we washed our feet, put on our shoes, and the ladies of
the party released their hair from its many tights braids;
then we set up our red bar on the gravelly shore, and put
on our act, glad to get one chance to present it undis-
turbed by the young dissenters, who, with no appreciation
of the classics had mocked us, and hindered us, with their
interruptions at our other rehearsals behind the wood-
pile. ~-

The “‘baby” should have been a little girl called Mary
according to Mr. T. 8. Arthur’s text, but we had no little
girl with fair curls, and I was determined to have fair
curls showing at one end of the green shawl and bare feet
at the other, so we had a little boy of seven, who had a
mop of yellow hair. We had to have a fair-sized child
who could walk the five miles there and back, and Benny
was able for that and more. The part was a minor one,
but important. He had to say, “Father, won't you come
home?” but he had to say it in a “low pleading voice, full
of sorrowful love, too deep for the heart of a child.” I
am quoting Mr. Arthur’s own words, and as director of
the play I had put a lot of time on Benny,—and had
promised him a beautiful glass alley, if he said his words
nicely. -

The final rehearsal was entirely satisfactory, and with
light hearts and high hopes, we continued our journey,
walking well up on the grass to keep the dust from our

198 CLEARING IN THE WEST

shining shoes. We crossed the bridge, skirted the high
bank of Oak Creek, and climbed the hill to the level field
where Millford School stood, surrounded now by horses
and rigs, and a swarm of people.

Our teacher had not been able to come with us, so
Bob, (Simon Slade) who was sixteen, and the eldest of
the company, made our presence known to the Millford
teacher; and we were warmly welcomed, and invited to
come over to the long table where the women were
clearing up the remains of the supper. We were given
salmon sandwiches and tea, and everyone was glad to
see us. After that we inspected the stage and the curtain,
and found all in order. The stage was small, but well
lighted with bracket lamps, and we put up our bar and
the bottles, and wished that we might begin. We knew
our parts, and were fearful of delay. The sun was still
several yards high, and did not seem to give an inch, and
we knew a play would hardly seem right without artificial
lights.

The baby had been left at the table, with his brother
Joe (the bartender), while Bob, Bert, Lena, and I in-
spected the stage. He had given us a little trouble in the
dress rehearsal, and seemed to be holding out for another
alley, but we were entirely unprepared for the blow that
fell on us, when Joe came running in to tell us that he
couldn’t find Benny anywhere, and was afraid he had
gone home. We dashed out and called. Everyone looked
and shouted. Then a little girl said she had seen a little
boy go over the hill, barefooted and travelling fast. It
was Benny! He had deserted us! The baby had gone
home over the sandhills—curls, and barefeet, and the
low pleading voice full of sorrowful love—and what could
we do?

A search began for a substitute. I canvassed the
crowd, now filing into the school. JI coaxed and bribed.
“You won’t need to speak—just cry a little, and I will
pinch you when the time comes.” There were no bid-
ders. At last I got a big eight-year-old girl, a heavy

THE DRAMATEURS 199

child, who lay like a bag of wheat in my arms. She had
no curls, and she wouldn’t take off her boots; they were
new ones. And she wriggled. But we put on our act.
With that squirming sand-bag in my arms I made my
speech. I told Simon Slade he would have been a happier
man, if he had remained an honest miller, grinding wheat
into flour to feed and nourish his neighbors. I warned
him that the ruin he was bringing to others would fall
upon him and his. Then I pleaded with Henry, my
Henry, to come home. The fat one cried at the right
place, but spoiled the effect by tapering it off with a
giggle.

The barroom loafers jeered at me, and asked Henry
why he didn’t keep me at home. Then Henry seemed to
sober up a little and said he was not going to have his
wife insulted, and would never put his foot in this cursed
place again. So Henry and I and the baby go out, and
the fun goes on. Mrs. Slade comes in just in time to see
her boy, who is minding the bar, take a drink on the sly,
and foresees his ruin. She cries and wrings her hands.

Henry, who evidently has given me the slip comes
back and lines up at the bar. Simon Slade applauds him.
Then the curtain falls, and three years pass.

When the curtain was drawn back on Act II we were
all there, except little Mary, who had died, and I stood
there bereaved (but relieved too), draped in my shawl.
Iam older and grayer and still looking for Henry. Simon
Slade had grown coarse, dishevelled and stout (Bob had
roughened his hair, and stuffed a towel under his vest,
and the effect was wonderful.) Old Judge Hammond,
the Mayor of Cedarville, stood, a trembling old man,
leaning on his cane. But we weren’t sorry for him—
he had thought a barroom was a good thing for Cedar-
ville. Willie Hammond, his son, lies dead on the floor.
Someone had thrown a bottle and killed him. Mrs.
Slade comes in, sees what has happened and screams.
Frank Slade, the proprietor’s son, is asleep in his chair,
too drunk to notice. Simon Slade turns to fly, but the

200 CLEARING IN THE WEST

sheriff appears with a warrant for his arrest, and an
order to close the ‘“Sheaf and Sickle.”
And it is all over!

We walked home in the starlit night, travelling to-
gether about half the distance. Then our roads divided.
An old moon hung low in the southwest, and the sky
was clear with millions of stars. Little warm breezes
came curling up from the hollows, fragrant and friendly.
About a mile from home the old dog met me, and al-
though I was not afraid, I was glad to have him. And
suddenly I felt tired. But it’s nothing to be tired when
you are happy. Our act had gone well. The people said
it was “wonderful”. I did not lose the shawl, and when
the sun rose the next day, it would be the First of July!

The first novel I read, was Meadow Brook by Mary

Zane Holmes, a worn and battered copy of which fell into
my hands somehow. It was a lovely story written in the
first person, and the heroine was the youngest of her
family, who was misunderstood by them and criticized
by them for talking too much. All these circumstances
helped me to see myself in its glamorous pages.
I read it eagerly and with rapture, and when this wonder-
ful little girl, with a heart of gold, was so bitterly mis-
understood that she decided to lie on the dewy grass,
catch cold and die, to spite her unfeeling family, I
thought it a fine idea, and served them right.
’ Indeed, there were many times, when I, sitting out
minding the cows from the crop, spent a happy hour
planning my own funeral. I marched my whole family
past my coffin, and let them look at my poor pale,
withered face, beautiful even in death, and I listened to
their belated penitence with keen satisfaction. Especially
Jack; I certainly let him repent, in a big way. Tears
streamed down his cheeks and his voice was choked with
sobs as he bitterly cried “She was too good to live!”

Having all the arrangements for the funeral in my

THE DRAMATEURS 201

own hands, I spared neither trouble nor expense. The
flowers were beautiful, and their perfume loaded the air.
And there was music—Lizzie sang. Lizzie had nothing
to repent of, so I let her sing and hoped the words of
her song fell heavily on the hearts of those who listened.
I hoped they fell like clods on a coffin;

“Tf we knew the baby fingers

Pressed against the window pane

Would be cold and stiff tomorrow
Never trouble us again.

Would the bright eyes of our darlings
Catch the frown upon our brow

Would the print of baby fingers
Vex us then, as they do now.”

The young heroine in the book did catch cold on the
dewy grass, and did get pneumonia. But I did not go
that far, I knew what I would get if I got a cold. It
would not be anything as romantic as pneumonia. I
would have a mustard plaster on my chest and get goose-
oil, in large, and regular doses.

When my delightful little heroine grew up she had
many lovers, who wooed her on bended knee, but coldly
she turned away from their gaze, for once she had seen
a face in a crowd, a dark, but beautiful face, chiselled in
lines of surpassing loveliness, with burning glowing eyes,
and to this dark unknown she gave her love.

She had a friend who had married a drunkard, and
was having a hard time, and often my little friend had
wondered how her friend could endure her life of trial.
Certainly she would never let Herbert (the drunkard)
away with such rough stuff. But then she thought “If it
were the dark man of my dreams, with the radiant
glowing, burning eyes .... would I endure it then?....
And the answer welled up from her faithful, loving
heart. Ah, yes, with gladness!

I do not know why this appealed to me, but it did. I
loved every page in the battered old volume.

_we

CHAPTER XXV
THE PARTY

My brother Will’s new house before the partitions were
put in, was used for a dance, a community affair, to
which the invitation was the usual flat one of “Come
Everyboy.” Social occasions were so few that no one
must be left out, and the settlement was still too new for
quarrels. So if you knew of a dance you went to it and
were sure of a welcome. The word was passed around
by various means, drivers of grain sleighs going to
Brandon, men cutting wood along the river bank, peo-
ple getting their mail at Millford carried the news, and
the few worshippers at the Monthly Service in the school
spoke of it too.

Real old-fashioned shouting Methodists spoke of it,
but did not come. They shook their heads, and said no
good ever came of a dance, especially round dances. My
father objected to them too. Reels and quadrilles had
symmetry and beauty, he said, but round dances were
nothing but ‘“hand-dragging”, and an offense to the eye.
Usually I followed my father in everything, being proud
of his dignified speech; but on this subject, I was at
variance with him and quite ashamed of his attack, and
particularly of this coarse expression; though Mr. Alfred
Noyes, in his poem “The Victory Dance’, many years
later used an equally offensive one when he spoke of “a
fat wet hand, on a fat wet back.”

I could not see any objection to round dances. At
School, we spent many happy noon-hours, when Mr.
Schultz went to his boarding house for lunch, circling
around the stove to the strained notes of Billy Day’s jews-
harp, breathing forth the “Jenny Lind” Polka and the
“Arkansas Traveller’.

202

THE PARTY 208

There would be round dances at Will’s party, and at
first father said he wouldn’t go, and at that a gulf of
despair opened under my young feet, for if he stayed
home I would not have a chance of going. My only hope
of ever getting to a dance was that I could not stay at
home alone. I put that to him when we were tying in the
cows one cold evening. He stood leaning on his pitch-
fork, behind the cows, and did not reply for a few min-
utes. I knew I had to approach the subject in a more
subtle way.

“I saw a picture of a dancer, with her hands on her
hips, twirling around,” I said, “I wish you’d show me
those steps.”

“Step dancing,” he said, “is a fine art and if it were
not for my rheumatism I’d be glad to show you—then,
when it comes to ‘balance-all’, you could let your feet
twinkle and cavort.”

I saw my advantage, and pressed him to show me,
and in the warmth of the stable I took off my coat and
prepared to imitate every movement. He lilted the
“Fisher’s Hornpipe’, and showed me two pretty steps,
and when I got them he was pleased with me, and I knew I
could go to the party; or at least he would not bar my
way. “Strike into this one,” he said, “tap with your left
and whirl on your right and you’]] have them all watching
you! It’s a graceful movement!”

I had another reason for wanting to go, one which I
now discreetly kept to myself. Jimmy Sloan, who in ad-
dition to his many attractions, was a fiddler, had called
out to me when we met on the road that he was going to
have a dance with me at Will’s party.

The night of the party came at last, a clear moon-
light night, with a great sky full of stars, and a glisten-
ing world of snow. As early as seven o’clock sleigh
bells chimed their cheerful notes through the frosty air
as the sleighs came crunching along the heavy trails.

Our long table had been taken over to Will’s house
and was piled with cakes and sandwiches covered with a

204 CLEARING IN THE WEST

red and white table cloth. Rolled jelly cakes with apple-
jelly filling, cinnamon buns, and apple pies, fruit cake,
doughnuts, and cookies were there in abundance. Mrs.
Naismith would bring cakes, too, and Mrs. William
Johnston jem-jars of cream for the coffee; they were the
only people in the neighborhood who had fresh cows.
The coffee would be made in two preserving kettles on
Will’s big new stove. Cups would be brought too, with
red and blue or grey yarn tied around their handles; to
distinguish them, for they were all plain white iron-
stone.

“We'll have the full of the house tonight,’ Mother
said, “for the night is so fine. There will be no room to
dance but they’ll be glad to get together anyway and
maybe they can play games; but remember Will don’t let
anyone start the kissing game; I’d rather have dancing
any day.” She was wearing her brown poplin, which
Lizzie had made over with a cream lace jabot.

“We'll be able to dance all right,’’ Will said. ‘We
have three fiddlers coming and can’t waste all that good
music, and Tom Clyde will call off. I’ve been at plenty
of dances where we hadn’t half as much room.”

Will had grown a moustache and looked very hand-
some in a navy blue striped suit. He and Lily, the girl
he was to marry, would be the finest couple on the floor.
Mother’s criticism of Will’s choice was that they were too
much alike, hair and eyes the same color and both had
small hands and feet. Mother had not forgotten the
beautiful blonde he had left behind him in Grey county;
the blue-eyed Anne with her fine capable hands.

At the dance Lily was dressed in a gray blue silk
dress with flounces on the skirt, and her slippers had
silver buckles. She was a little bird-like thing with a
childish voice, and graceful movements, who looked no
more than seventeen, and being the youngest of her
family was still considered a child by her elders. When
Mother spoke of her she always shook her head but we
knew it was because of her loyalty to the Grey county

THE PARTY 205

girl. I felt sorry for Annie too for to lose my brother
Will must be desolation, indeed. Still Will had his own
life to live and must make his own choice.

What an evening that was lasting until the saffron
light of morning stained the east!

Fortunately for me there was a dearth of ladies, so
I was asked for the first quadrille by Dan Thorne. He
was one of our neighbors and his wife, who was much
younger than he was, was dancing with Jimmy Sloan,
who lived on the next farm to theirs. Mrs. Thorne should
have danced with her husband, for this was the first dance
of the evening, but everyone knew she didn’t care any-
thing about poor old Dan. The sympathy of the neigh-
borhood was with Dan. The women said he was too
good to her and she did not know enough to appreciate
him. He even brought her breakfast to bed on the lid
of the boiler. At any rate Mrs. Thorne was the neigh-
borhood mystery, with her city clothes. Then there was
the ruby necklace which she always wore even around
the house. She was never seen without it. It may have
been glass or it may not, opinions differed. Certainly it
glowed like fire. She had been a waitress in a hotel
when Dan met her and it was more charitable to believe
the necklace was an imitation, for how could a hotel
waitress have a real ruby necklace set in gold?

I was dancing with Dan Thorne at the third figure
when the fiddlers began the Fisher’s Hornpipe and I got
my chance. When the caller-off gave the command “dance
to your partner, and corner the same;’ I did my steps,
and so well, that I did receive applause, and plenty of it
and the caller-off gave me the floor.

But there is a law that never ceases to operate in
human affairs, and I fell under its operation in this
intoxicating moment. ... It is called the law of diminish-
ing returns. Being able to dance had brought me to this
place of delight, but being able to dance well caused me
to be banished from it. My Mother was horrified to see
me whirl and bend with my hands on my hips; while the

206 CLEARING IN THE WEST

company watched and cheered, and when the dance was
over she called me aside.

“It’s more your father’s fault than yours,” she said,
“but you’re too young a girl to carry on like this, whirl-
ing your legs like a play-actor; with everyone looking at
you. Now I want you to go upstairs and quiet yourself.
You looked like a wild thing there and I couldn’t bear to
look at you. Don’t think the people applauded you be-
cause your performance was pretty; people are always
willing for someone else to play the fool for their enter-
tainment. Now, you can stay upstairs until the refresh-
ments are served and then you can come down. There’s
three babies on the bed and you can look after them.
They might cry and nobody would hear them. I can’t
watch you when I have so many things to look after, and
I won’t be worried about you, if you are there.”

I wanted a word with father before I went or even a
look. I wanted to know what he thought. If I had
pleased him, and I was pretty sure I had, I wouldn’t care
for anything. I had had my fling! He was standing
near the stairs when I passed. I pulled his coat sleeve to
let him know that I was there, “Well done, Sparrow-
Shins!” he said with a smile and patted my shoulder. I
could have gone cheerfully to the Black Hole of Calcutta
after that. I went upstairs humming the Fisher’s Horn-
pipe. A light burned low on the homemade dresser, and
the heat from the stairway augmented by a black pot of
live coals made the big room comfortable. I looked at my
three small charges sound asleep on the bed. There were
two beds in the room; the other one held the wraps of the
women.

The babies slept soundly in spite of the noise that
came from below; the music of the fiddlers, the scraping
of feet, the voice of the caller-off, rising above the waves
of conversation that had a rhythm of its own. It was
strange that they could sleep so well. I stole back to the
stairway to hear what I could but the fragments of
conversation that came up did not interest me, it was all

THE PARTY 207

of horses, and harness, and grain prices and heavy roads.

But I was still glowing with the sense of elation that
came when I danced, a glorious feeling that swept me
out of myself. I could understand why girls climbed
down from upstairs windows to go to dances. I could
do it too; probably would some time. There was nothing
wrong in dancing. How could there be? Dead leaves
whirled and circled and soared in the wind, so light and
lithe, and graceful. I wanted to dance like them, just
by myself, with music lifting my feet as if by magic.
There was something in my blood that answered the
rhythm. ... But I must be quiet, or I would disturb the
babies. I was not lonely in my temporary exile, for I
had the best part of the party in the music that cut
through all the sounds and came up to me in a crimson
tide of melody... .

I thought of the prairie chickens in the spring, just
before they settle down to hatch out their young. I had
seen them dancing in circles, bobbing and bowing, nod-
ding and hopping with their feet tight together, like a
man’s in a sack race. And so carried away by excite-
ment were they, that anyone could creep up on them....
Many a bird came to an inglorious end that way, struck
down by some unscrupulous person.

I knew very well that Mother was more afraid for me
than for either Hannah or Lizzie. And there were times
when I shared her fears. There was the time when I
met the Kennedy family who settled on Section 22, just
east of us, and I went away with them, forgetting that I
had the cattle to herd; forgetting that I had on the one
pair of boots that Hannah and I used to protect our feet
from the hard grass. Boots and all I went and stayed
half the day. I had a glorious time while Hannah in her
bare feet had had to mind the cows. It was a mean thing
I had done and what frightened me was that I had
entirely forgotten Hannah and the cows. I had been
another person in another world.

I tried to be fair to Mother, I could see her side of it.

208 CLEARING IN THE WEST

She was afraid I would fall into bad company and be so
fascinated with dancing I would not know what I was
doing; but she was wrong in thinking I wanted to dance
only to be seen. There was more than that in my danc-
ing. It was the elation of it, the joy, the freedom....

One little one coughed, and I turned it over. It was
Mrs. Thorne’s baby, and seemed to have a heavy cold.
Its little forehead was dewy with perspiration and I could
see she had laid it down with its heavy wraps on and it
was too hot. I loosened its shawls as well as I could. The
other little ones were in their night clothes, and slept
comfortably. Mrs. Thorne had no sense about the baby,
everyone knew that. She hadn’t had a stitch of clothes
ready for little June when she was born for she said she
had a feeling the child would not live. That showed what
sort of woman she was. June Thorne, poor little soul,
was a sour baby, never quite clean.

I was not very deft in handling a baby, for I had
never had any experience but I wriggled the little thing
out of her smothering clothes some way. There was
another smell on her, too, a sickly sweet smell new to me.
I noticed it when I was loosening her shawls and I had
wondered about it. I knew that there was something that
women gave their babies to make them sleep at times.
I had heard it mentioned as another evidence of the
wickedness of dances. Maybe this was what smelled on
little June’s breath and made her seem so heavy and
lifeless and her breathing so deep... . It made children
stupid when they grew up, I knew that too. June was a
pretty little thing, who seldom smiled and always had
bumps on her forehead, where she had fallen.

I lay down across the bed, watching the light from
below stairs flickering on the new rafters and thought of
Mrs. Thorne. It must be terrible to have a baby you
didn’t want. . .. I was quite determined I would never
have any—though I hoped there would be plenty in our
family for I liked minding a baby and washing its fat
little hands... . But I might be wild to go to a dance some

THE PARTY 209

time, and be mean enough to give the baby a dose. ... if
there was no other way. Mother was right. Maybe she
saw I had it in me to be mean like that! Well I’d never
get married so there would be no danger. I re-
membered the picnic I was at the summer before at
Stockton and how draggled and tired Kate Simpson was.
She had just been married a year, and had a baby a
month old, lying on the seat of the buggy. She couldn’t
come over to see the baseball game or anything and
wasn’t a bit like herself. The fun had all gone out of
her. Babies were all right for older women who didn’t
care for sports or dances, but it was tough to have one
when you were young....

I was awakened by voices quite near me and lifted
my head and saw two people sitting at the head of the
stairs, a man and a woman. Her head was on his
shoulder and his arms were around her.

This was all very thrilling to me. Here was Romance
just as it had been pictured in the Family Herald, but the
scene should have been in the conservatory or on a bench
in the garden over which the trees obligingly spread
their branches. But here it was and near enough for
me to hear the conversation. I could not help hearing.

“Take me away Jimmy,” she was saying, “I hate
everything and everybody here. I can’t stand it any
longer. This country is too hard on women, with its hard
water and awful cold. I have to get away and can be
happy anywhere with you. I would starve with you
Jimmy and be happy but I will go crazy if I have to go on
this way. I’ll be an old woman before I am twenty-five.”

“Don’t cry Fay,” he said soothingly, “you have had
it tough and I will do anything for you that I can. Vl
never go back on you.”

Fay. Jimmy! It was Jimmy Sloan and Mrs.
Thorne! The talk about them was true! And here she
was asking him to run away with her and her a married
woman with a little girl depending on her. This was
terrible and what could I do? I knew an eavesdropper

210 CLEARING IN THE WEST

was the lowest thing made. And yet I could not let
Jimmy Sloan go like this. He was too fine a boy to have
his whole life ruined. She probably wanted to get away
so badly she did not care who took her... . I could not lie
still and let this go on. It was too much like watching
the mink robbing the hen-house.

I did not catch all that Jimmy said. He was on the
other side of her and his voice did not carry so well.

Then I heard her say, “I have money, Jimmy. Six
hundred dollars. Dan gave it to me to keep when he sold
his wheat. That will give us a start.”

I could feel the change in Jimmy’s voice and I knew
he drew away from her.

“You took Dan’s money,” he said. “You did that!
Say what do you think Iam? I would not take you now
for anything on earth. I am a good bit of a fool but I
am not a thief. If I took you away now knowing that
you had stolen this money I would never be able to look
any decent person in the face as long as I lived. No,
Fay, I will not go with you. I am done.”

“But Jimmy,” she coaxed, “don’t get so mad about it.
J did this for you more than for myself, because I love
you. Any woman will steal for the one she loves. We
will be able to find good jobs and we can pay it back if
we want to. I can go back to where J was in the hotel and
I know lots of people there and they will get you into a
dance orchestra Jimmy and you can study music. And
Jimmy, Dan will never tell a soul that I took this money.
He would not let anyone know that for June’s sake and
he will not follow us or make any sort of a row. I know
Dan.”

“T know him too and he is the squarest and best friend
IT ever had. Neither you or I are good enough to blacken
his boots. So it is all off, Fay. Let us forget everything.
No one knows about this and no one ever need know. I
was crazy and so were you but there is no harm done.”

In her rage she forgot to whisper. “Do you think you
ean ditch me like this,’ she cried, “I tell you I am
desperate and I am going out of here if I have to shoot

THE PARTY 211

myself. .;.. And what is there to stop me from telling
Dan that it was your idea to take the money—he will
believe njy word before anybody’s. ...I despise you any-
way for being so mealy-mouthed about the money. You
would steal a man’s wife but not his money—that is a fine
code of morals.”

Jimm, was unmoved by her fury.

“Don’t be a fool, Fay,” he said, “there is a difference.
But I am not taking either. I am sorry for all this but I
can see how it would end. I could never get along with
you. We would be fighting before we got half way to
Brandon.”

Someone was coming up the stairs then and they
began to talk about something else.

“I just ran up to see how June was,’ Mrs. Thorne
said, “and Jimmy and I have been sitting here waiting
for her to wake up. She has done well to sleep all this
time. It is not often she sleeps so long.”

Mrs. Gray had come up to see her baby, and as she
stooped over the bed she discovered me.

“Why Nellie,” she said, “sound asleep and missing
all the fun. I did that once too when I was about your
age and slept until daylight when the people came up to
get their things. And I certainly felt cheated. Your
Mother did not mean for you to stay here all the time.
Go down now and have your cake and sandwiches.”

Jimmy and Mrs. Thorne had gone down before me.
I washed my face at the wash-stand and went down stairs
yawning.

The party was about to break up for a blue dawn was
showing through the windows and dulling the glow of the
lamps. The women looked tired too with the curl coming
out of their hair. In an armchair one man was asleep.
I could see by Mother’s face that she thought the people
should have gone home some time ago, and I wondered
why she had not sent them. But she explained after-
wards that this was Will’s party and she did not like to
step in. They were not children and should know them-
selves when it was time to go.

212 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I looked around for Jimmy Sloan. He was putting
his fiddle in its case and looked worried. He s.;w me too
and called out to me that we had not had our dance, but
I shook my head. There was no fun in dancing now. The
glamour had gone from everything. Dirty dishes stood
on the tables, plates with a few sandwiches, and cups
half-full of coffee, with broken bits of cake on the saucers.

Upstairs the babies cried and someone was calling
loudly, hunting for one overshoe. Dan Thorne went up
and brought June down in a bundle of shawls. Mrs.
Thorne said goodnight to Mother and tried to smile when
she said she had had a good time but her mouth seemed
to have stiffened.

“You have gone to a lot of trouble, Mrs. Mooney, and
it has all been so pleasant. It gives us a chance to get
acquainted. I always feel like a different woman when
I have been to a party.” Her face had the look of a
withered white lily. But the ruby necklace glowed and
gleamed. I was glad she had it.

The gray dawn was full of shivers and I wanted to
go home. Father and Hannah had gone an hour ago
Mother said, and I had better be off too and get to bed.
Out in the fresh air of the winter’s morning I soon ran
the quarter mile. A cheerful column of smoke arose from
our chimney with its assurance of warmth and comfort.
It was just like Hannah to leave the party at exactly the
right time and I wished again that I could be like her.
She was always right. I would forget all about Jimmy
Sloan and Mrs. Thorne and get back to the safe compli-
cations of King John and the barons and the peaceful
atmosphere of the Wars of the Roses.

It was in the spring of that year that little June
Thorne died and on the day of the funeral there was a
cold snow storm. I remember the smothering smell of
wet fur in the front room of the little house where the
neighbors gathered, when in the heat of the big black
stove the snow began to melt on the buffalo and coon
coats. The small white coffin stood on the table sur-

THE PARTY 213

rounded by pots of blooming geraniums which the women
had brought when they came in to clean up the house.
Everyone knew that Mrs. Thorne was no housekeeper.
So the women had scrubbed the floor and made news-
paper curtains for the shelves; and hung clean muslin
curtains at the two front windows, put a white spread on
the bed and pillow-shams over the pillows. Poor Mrs.
Thorne had no knack for housework and could not make
a home if she had all “the wealth of the Indies.” So I
had often heard.

I was glad I had not told anyone what I had heard on
the night of Will’s party. That was all I could do for her
and I had done it with a stupendous effort, for that story
would certainly have been a scoop in our quiet neigh-
borhood, if I had released it and I would have gained a
certain importance too. But something held me back
from speech. I think I held my tongue as a wholesome
spiritual exercises but I did wish that my Mother could
know. It would be an eye-opener to her to see how noble
I could be. And she would surely be sorry then for the
time she upheld my brother Jack when he said that my
tongue was hung in the middle and worked both ways.

Little June’s funeral was one of unrelieved sadness.
Her father, weather-beaten, gray-haired Dan Thorne, sat
beside the little coffin and wept uncomforted. Mrs.
Thorne’s grief was terrible. She rocked herself in the
rocking-chair crying out that she was a wicked women
and had never loved little June until now and now it was
too late; that she was not fit to live but was afraid to die.

When Mr. Adams, the minister, came Mother got her
to come with her into the bedroom and the service began.
I knew Mother would comfort Mrs. Thorne if anyone
could for she had a wonderful way with people who were
sick or in trouble. Just before the coffin was closed Mrs.
Thorne came out of the bedroom quite composed and
tearless, and looked her last on the little white face. ...
Then suddenly she reached over and put something on
the two little folded hands. It was her ruby necklace.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE FAMILY IS EXTENDED

THE night my brother Will was married, everyone went
to the wedding but Father and me. I think Father would
have liked to go, but he stayed with me, and we had a
great evening together. He told me of fairies that dance
on the bogs in their little brown and gold velvet dresses,
and of banshees that come to windows combing their
hair, and crying, before a death in the family, and of his
friend Ned Miney who worked with him in the lumber
camp at Bytown, a devout Catholic, who came back to
Bytown every three months for confession and told his
beads every night and morning, and how all the men
respected him, and hushed their talk, when Ned knelt by
his bunk. And of the time he went with Ned to church,
in Bytown, and enjoyed the music, so soft and impres-
sive and the flickering candles on the altar.

“But remember,” he said, when he had finished with
his description of the church service, “it was among the
Methodists that I learned the way of life. Religion is
more than an emotion or an impulse, it is a way of living,
and I saw the lives of the Methodists, there in Bytown,
simple, sincere and godly people, and so I threw in my lot
with them. I’ve wandered from the path, but I’ve always
come back.

“I went to the Episcopalian church first, when I came
out, for I had been confirmed in the Established Church
at home, but I felt strange with them. I got never a hand-
shake, or a kind word, nor even a look, and me just a
lonesome lad of eighteen. The pews were high, and had
names on them, so I felt like an interloper among them,
and there they sat, each one, keeping up his or her
dignity.

214

THE FAMILY IS EXTENDED 215

“At home in Ireland, there was always a lot of friend-
ly talk before we went in, and around the headstones
when we came out, and Mr. Jordan himself, after he took
off his cassock, would come down to the door. But the
clergyman in Bytown did not seem like a man at all, but
just a high and hollow voice; cantering through the ser-
vice and cutting in on the heels of the stragglers, if they
gave the responses a little more slowly than he thought
they should. It was just one rigmarole to me with no
worship in it. So when one of the boys took me out to
the Methodist chapel, I stayed, and found them friendly,
simple-hearted people and J loved their hymns.” And in
a few months after that he joined the Methodist church.
The services were held in a home, for they had no build-
ing. And once he heard the Rev. Edgerton Ryerson there,
explaining the trouble about the clergy reserves and the
way the Anglicans were trying to keep all other de-
nominations from having a share in the great grant of
land set apart for all churches in Canada. He could
see, he said, the Anglican tradition of apostolic succes-
sion and special privilege was out of place in a new
country where friendliness and neighborliness were the
great needs.

We sat up as late as we liked, there being no one to
hurry us off to bed, and I made him his gruel the way
he liked it, with a flavoring of nutmeg, and ate a mug of it
myself. Then I brought him the draw-knife, and a piece
of board to make the shavings for the morning and I
stood on a chair and wound the clock, and brought in the
dog, and took the two cats down to the stable, where they
would sit on the cows’ backs all night, very warm and
welcome. About twelve o’clock I brought in the boot-
jack and he removed his boots, leaning on my shoulder
to steady himself. Then he sat down in his carpet
slippers, and asked me to read the ninety-first psalm, and
after I read it, he sat a long time thinking, and the clock’s
tick seemed to grow louder, until it filled the house.

I knew he was thinking of Will, and wishing him well.

216 CLEARING IN THE WEST

He got up and fixed the fire for the night, putting in
some green wood to hold back the dry from too rapid a
burning and filling the oven, to have plenty of dry wood
for the morning, then he told me we had better ‘‘be for
our beds”, for tomorrow was another day.

The next morning, when I was on my way to school,
Hannah and I went in to see our new sister-in-law. She
and Will] were sitting at breakfast, and she kissed us both,
and poured us cups of coffee, “I have a big pot,” she said,
“go there will always be plenty for the two girls on their
way to school.” She had on a plaid dress, green and
black, and a white apron, and she had brought her
cat, a lovely yellow one, who lay asleep in the rocking
chair.

It was a sweet bright spring morning and a patch of
warm sunshine stretched across the bare floor. This
was the fifth of March.

Hannah of course, knew what to say, ““We hope you
will like us, Lily,” she said, “we know we are going to
like you!’

We went on our way, fecling very happy and much
richer. We had two houses now in our family, instead
of one, and another cat, yellow as amber. Soon after
Will’s marriage, George went to live on his own farm a
mile and a half north of our house, on the bank of a
wooded ravine which ran down to he Souris. Lizzie was
married in 1887 to Tom Rae who had built a frame house
across the ravine from George’s and nearer the river.
These changes saddened mother. She would have been
glad to keep her family under her own roof, all their lives.
The women of that day, seeing their familly leave them,
foresaw the desolation of an empty old age. My father
was more philosophical.

“It’s the way of the world,” he would say to comfort
her. “People must expect to see their children branch
out and do for themselves. We should be thankful to see
them able to make their own way, and Lizzie is not far
away, and you can still bake and wash for George.”

THE FAMILY IS EXTENDED 217

My new brothew-in-law was a Scotch Canadian whose
people lived in Paisley, Ontario, and I think his fine
Scotch accent did as much as any other quality to win
mother’s heart.

To George’s little house, Mother and I went each
Saturday afternoon, to do a little cleaning, and “ridying’’.
We emptied the tea-leaves, made the bed, scrubbed the
floor, and brought his clean clothes; George’s house, and
his experience with housekeepers formed the background
of a story I wrote years afterwards called The Runaway
Grandmother.

CHAPTER XXVII
HANDS ACROSS THE SEA

THERE was no unemployment in the west in the eighties.
Indeed, the problem of help in the harvest fields began
to trouble the farmer, and through the railway company,
arrangements were made to bring out men from Eng-
land and Scotland.

The procedure of getting a man was simple. You
went to the railway office and put down your name, and
agreed to pay to the newcomer, five dollars a month for
the first year, and endeavour to teach him the rudiments
of farming, and the railway, in turn, brought the men and
gave notification of their arrival.

Our farm now had a hundred and fifty acres under
cultivation and an extra man could be put to plowing,
after the seeding was done. There was still another
hundred acres to be broken. Will put down his name for
a man, too, and the Northfield District had an allotment
of nine men.

The day the men came to Brandon, the farmers went
there to pick their men. Will got a slim, fair-haired, good-
looking man, named Edwin Guest, but Jack brought home
one of the queerest looking Englishmen we had ever seen.

It was impossible to tell his age; he might be nineteen
or thirty-nine, awkward and big, with a broad face,
thick lips, and an oily shine on his skin.

Jack’s explanation was that no one was willing to
take him, because of his looks, and he couldn't bear to
see the poor fellow’s feelings hurt; and he might be a
good man at that; a hired man did not have to have looks.
Mother supported Jack warmly, and from the first
glimpse of William, liked him. To her, homeliness always
made an appeal. There was something steadfast and de-

218

HANDS ACROSS THE SEA 219

pendable about homely people removed as they were from
one zone of temptation and William justified all her
hopes; for he combined the strength of Louis St. Cyr, the
French-Canadian hero, with the gentleness of a sheep
dog. He was never tired and never out of humor, and
after a few weeks we saw we had the best man of the
nine. And besides, William was a Wesleyan, from York-
shire, from the valley of the Ribble, and among his books
were sermons and lectures by the great Yorkshire
preachers.

The nine Englishmen were quickly assimilated into
the life of the neighborhood and brought many con-
tributions to our quiet life. They brought us books of all
kinds which we would not have had, Kingsley’s West-
ward Ho, Evilena and Captain Marryat’s Phantom Ship
which I read until I was afraid to go to bed, loving every
word of it.

They introduced us to peaked caps made of tweed in
large checks, and they gave us our first sight of yellow
tin trunks. Edwin Guest brought an accordian, and
grafted on the sturdy stalk of our musical education, from
the music halls of Manchester, such frivolous blossoms
as McGee’s Backyard and It’s a Great Big Shame. But
Edwin had a Sunday repertoire too, and introduced into
our Sunday School, Master the Tempest is Raging, with
fine effect and bewildering variations, greatly appreciated
by his audience.

So it happened in the eighties that the old land and
ours met and profited by their association.

We had another element in our neighborhood, too,
from over the water. There came, a few years after our
coming a doctor with his family who took up land across
the river, and started his sons in farming. The estab-
lishment, he set up there, belonged not in our times, but
to the shadowy period we call the middle ages. He ruled
his small domain with a heavy hand and brooked no op-
position. His wife, a slender little dark-eyed woman,
With a skin as fine as a faded rose leaf, fluttered about

220 CLEARING IN THE WEST

him, in a frenzy of patient solicitude. The sons who were
grown men came in from the fields to receive his direc-
tions, and when he did come forth to personally inspect
their operations, the family followed, at a respectful dis-
tance, in silence .

He had not intended to practice medicine; but some
one discovered that he was a medical doctor, and so the
needs of the neighborhood pressed him into service. He
had come to Canada to get away from sick people, most
of whom he said would be better dead anyway. Why
did they hang on to life, if they believed in heaven? He
had some interest, (although a scornful one) in the land
of his adoption, for on occasions he took his pen in hand,
and bitterly denounced the governments of Canada in
letters to the newspapers. I remember one letter of his
which appeared in the Brandon Sun under the caption
of “What the ignorant farmer pays for his stupidity”.

No one resented this, and the old man was regarded
with a feeling of tolerance in the neighborhood, mingled
with not a little awe; for he was in impressive figure
when we went abroad, wearing a wide-brimmed black
hat, and a long cape and a flowing Tolstoi beard.

There was another Englishman, who came to our
neighborhood, as a farm hand, too, who must be
chronicled by me for I owe him a tribute of affection and
gratitude.

He came in a later assignment of farm laborers, and
went to the farm of our nearest ncighbor, the Ingrams.
He was a thin young man called ‘Alf’, with a sharp nose,
large dark eyes and bushy hair. The family were all
away one day to a picnic leaving Alf at home. When
they returned they heard strange sounds in the house,
some one was playing the piano! They came in on
tiptoe, and listened. They knew they were listening to a
great musician. In blue overalls and long boots with his
bushy hair standing straight up, Alf was playing, making
his work-worn hands do his bidding once more. No one
spoke or moved. When he was done he arose and took

HANDS ACROSS THE SEA 221

the applause of an imaginary audience. Then he saw
the family and with an apology went out to do the evening
chores. “I thought I was through with it,” he told Mrs.
Ingram, “but it got me again.” She urged him to play
whenever he felt like it but it was six months before he
did.

When his year was completed, he began to teach music
in the neighborhood. He made his journeys on foot, and
in all weathers; coming regularly on his rounds, a genial,
pleasant man, always the same and always a mystery.
He became Professor Grainger at once and was a
privileged person from that day, welcome at every table
and fireside. He wrote no letters and received none. No
one ever knew where he came from though he taught
music there for twenty years. But he gave us a love and
understanding of music, and added greatly to the happi-
ness of our lives. He was always ready to play; and
made an imposing figure at church anniversaries or wed-
dings, when he came forth in a Prince Albert coat, and
top hat. He told me once his life was divided in periods
of twenty years and at the end of twenty years he would
go on. He thought he would go to California, he said.
Then having broken all records in that burst of con-
fidence he lapsed into silence again. He went as silently
as he came, like the sparrow that came into the lighted
banquet hall by one window and out by another. He said
goodbye to no one, and has not been heard of since by
any of the friends who knew him then.

From William’s books we read of the great William
Dawson, the Yorkshire preacher, whose eloquence had
swept many a sinner into the ways of peace and righteous-
ness. Born on a farm, William Dawson had done all sorts
of hard work, even worked in coal mines, below the sea,
but the hand of God was laid on him when he was
eighteen, and wherever he preached the spirit of God
fell on the congregation. We read his sermons aloud,
and I always heard a voice like a rushing wind in his

words. I remember one sentence because I wrote it in

od
Seal

~
i

222 CLEARING IN THE WEST

one of my school books. “The gospel of humanity, like
the gospel of the silent earth, must begin with the raw
material.” I did not understand it, but it thrilled me.

Another supply of reading matter which came to us
from the Old Land was addressed to our farm, “Section
20, Township 7, Range 16” but without a name. Peri-
odicals, papers and books came every three mont for
years and as there was no trace of the sender, we could
make no acknowledgment. The service went on for ten
years. One day there came a letter from her secretary
telling us of the death of Miss M. E. Breasted at whose
request the papers had been sent. She was an invalid
lady of some means, who had used her income to send
reading matter to the settlers of Western Canada, choos-
ing one family in each township. We wrote back, telling
of our gratitude, and of how we had passed the books
and papers around to the neighbors, but it has always
been a matter of regret that we had not known of Miss
Breasted while she was living.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE First SoRROW

My sister Lizzie’s first baby died.

She had been out gathering the eggs, and slipped on
a loose plank in the granary, and because of her fal! the
baby came prematurely, and lived only five days.

The doctor from Glenboro, sixteen miles away, had
been brought; and Mother was there, but nothing could be
done.

The loss of the baby was a great grief to Lizzie for
she had been very happy about its coming even though
she had not been well all summer. But she had scalloped
white flannel barricoats and embroidered little dresses,
sewed and knitted and told me that she would soon
forget all her ailments when the baby came. I was not
so sure....I felt sorry that she had to be tied in with a
baby. She seemed too young to have to take up life’s
burdens when she was only twenty-two and have to stay
at home from all the parties and picnics. When a woman
had a baby her good times were over!

But, when I saw the baby’s sweet little wrinkled face;
and heard his protesting cry, I would have given my
heart’s blood, if it could have saved him. I stayed at
home from school and helped with the house-work and all
day long, as I worked in the kitchen that little hurt wail,
like a spring wind mourning in a chimney, cut through
me. Sometimes he slept, but even then I heard it
through my ears, laying my heart wide open. It was
such a little helpless cry, a complaint against a world
which he had not wanted to enter.

One afternoon, when Mrs. Ingram had come to relieve
Mother, I went out to the bank of the ravine behind the
house, where no one could see me cry, and laid my face

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224 CLEARING IN THE WEST

on the earth’s cold breast, and tried to make a bargain
with God. I would renounce every ambition I had ever
known if He would let the baby live. I would burn my
books, and turn to household work—which I hated; I
would carry the baby in my arms night and day. I would
shelter and care for him, and find all the joy of my life
in him if God would let him live.

But the clouds sailed on, wild geese flying south
keened above me, a cold wind shook down dead leaves
around me and the hard grass of the hillside hurt my
face....

When I came back to the house, the stillness of it
struck me like a blow. I knew without any one telling
me that the little flame of life had gone out.

Tom went to Glenboro, and brought back a little coffin,
covered with white brocaded velvet; and Mr. Adams, the
Methodist minister, came and read the burial service in
the house. In the Millford cemetery there is still the
little green mound, marked with a small white stone, on
which “Baby Rae” is carved. He was the first of our
family to be laid there.

After Lizzie had recovered, life settled down, and I
was back at school again, sobered somewhat by what had
happened; I was not quite so sure of myself, and not a
little afraid. Life might take a snap at me any time.
I thought of the prairie chickens off their guard, when
they danced their mating dance; easy victims in their one
“ mad delirious hour. Women were the same and for them
life was as treacherous as ice. I had thought I was
strong like Queen Elizabeth who kept clear of sex com-
plications, but now I could see I was wavering. I knew
that I would like to have a baby of my own some time.
Thad resisted dolls all my life, not without a struggle. I
had been scornful of the great trunk full of pillow shams
and splashers and hem-stitched sheets that Lily Dewart
had all ready. Marriage to me had a terrible finality
about it. It seemed like the end of all ambition, and hope
and aspiration. And yet I knew now since the baby had

THE FIRST SORROW 225

come that a child is greater than all books and all learn-
ing and that little first cry is mightier than the cheers
of ten thousand people.

I wished very bitterly that I was either one thing or
the other; hard as nails, and able to do without all family
connections or as simple and contented as little Mrs. Bill-
ings who had just come to Millford. She said she had
never read a book in her life for after all “they only take
a woman’s mind off her work and maybe make her
discontented,” but she did like having a newspaper com-
ing in each week because there were cooking recipes in
it and besides “scalloped newspapers looked nice on the
pantry shelves.”

Life was a direct and simple thing for the people who
knew what they wanted, I thought, reasoning from the
lives of the people I knew. There was the old man Fer-
guson who took delight in his potatoes. Mat Moggy had
trotting horses. Billy Henderson of Brandon was the
wit of the community and played practical jokes which
were told and retold by his friends. Many of the men
I knew had the lust for more and more land and got their
thrills out of mere possession. Women had not so diverse
a program. Well, anyway, it seemed that the way to
be happy was to have enough of some one thing. Even
crazy people could be gloriously happy if they were very
crazy! But not those who have only a slight derange-
ment. I was fearful of being the sort of person who had
a little of many things and not much of any thing. I
tried to get some light and leading from Milton whose
“Il Penseroso”, “Lycidas”, and “L’Allegro” were a part
of the prescribed literature that year. I had committed
many lines to memory as I walked the two miles, night
and morning, and turned them over in my mind looking
for some plan of life. Best of all I liked the Ode to Mirth
with its rollicking metre, so easy to remember:

“Where the plowman near at hand
Whistles o’er the furrowed land,

226 CLEARING IN THE WEST

And the milkmaid singeth blithe

And the mower whets his scythe,

And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the vale,
Straight mine eyes have caught new treasures
While the landscape round it measures.”

I loved that. But there were times when I wondered
how happy the mower and the milkmaid and the plow-
man really were, interesting and romantic as they were
to the poet, when he was out for his walk and knew he
was going home to a warm fire and an easy chair and a
good meal which some one had cooked for him. What
did he know about them any way? Quite likely the
milkmaid had chapped hands and the shepherd chillblains
and stonebruises according to the season. And all of
them were probably underpaid and overworked and lived
lives of chill stagnation.
When I wrote I would write of the people who do the
work of the world and I would write it from their side of
the fence, and not from the external angle of the casual
visitor who likes to believe that the poor are always

happy.

CHAPTER XXIX.
WHEN THE Door OPENED

WE were getting on. There was a new carpet in the
front room, full of scrolls, and flowers of great beauty,
but of no known family, bulbous lilies with spotted leaves
like serpents’ tongues; and chintz curtains on the win-
dows, and real blinds, green with a roller and brass ring
to pull them down instead of the crotcheted cord; and the
kitchen had been given another layer of boards, so it
could be used all winter; and Mother had a silk eiderdown
on her bed, old gold on one side and flowered with red
geraniums on the other.

Even in the face of an abundant crop, the acid little
economies of the household went on, little restrictions
which burned into me. Coal-oil cost money, and was not .
to be lightly consumed by night-reading after lessons
were done. This was to me the most irritating of all,
Lack of shoe-blacking was another sore point. Lard and
lamp-black was just as good, and even if it was more
trouble, what of it? We had more time than money.
Better people than we had used it all their lives!

How I hated all this! But in my fiercest moods of /
rebellion I was glad of these irritations; they kept alive
my ambition. I would make my escape; I would gain my
independence, and every day brought me nearer. I
thought of John Wesley, who, being my father’s idol, was
mine too. He had a nagging, uncomfortable wife, who
gave him no peace at home, and perhaps that was one
reason he give himself so freely to the world. A soft
chair, comfort and domestic calm might have held him
to his own fireside... .

I had another grievance too, the last year I was at
school. In getting winter clothes for me, this year, my

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228 CLEARING IN THE WEST

bloomers were made from mother’s old dressing gown,
and because mats were indicated, the gown was dyed
before it was made over. So I found myself clad in scar-
let bloomers, and although held in by elastic at the knee,
inclined to droop when I ran.

I raised a mighty storm of opposition for I felt ut-
terly disgraced. How could I play “shinny” with these
flaring outrages showing under my skirts. Mother said
I did not need to play “shinny.” That wasn’t what I
went to school for! I should be glad to have nice heavy
comfortable clothes to keep me warm! No, I didn’t need
the exercise, two miles night and morning was enough
exercise for anyone.

I wore them. I had to. But I tightened the elastic

until it cut into my legs and left a red mark, each night,
above my knees. And I played no shinny that winter,
thereby losing my seniority on the team. I had been
third “pick.” Isat in the school, nursing this secret scar-
let sorrow. But I got on with my history and literature.
So perhaps, as in the case of John Wesley, the wrath of
man was again made to contribute to the glory of God.
+ Looking back, I can see how unfair I was to Mother.
She was as ambitious for me as I was for myself, and
never begrudged me money for books or necessary cloth-
ing. She would gladly deny herself to this end; and she
knew how slowly money came, with eggs ten cents a
dozen and butter eighteen. But, with the intolerance of
youth, I only knew that I was being held down with bit
and bridle.

My sister Hannah enriched the stream of our family
life in many ways and gave us all many reasons for being
proud of her. When she attended the Normal in Winni-
peg she did such good work in her teaching that the De-
partment of Education raised her certificate from grade
“B” to grade “A”. She brought back with her the
Toronto College Song Book with its mirthf airs.

I remember exactly how she looked wheh she sat on
the organ stool in her red henrietta cloth dress, made with

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 229

a peplin which hung down over the stool, for she was care-
ful not to sit on it. She had profited from Professor
Grainger’s music lessons, and now played the organ for
the church services when Mrs. Merrill was not there.
From her, the songs learned at the Normal spread to
Northfield school and we were now singing the “March of
the Men of Harlech,” “Into a Tent Where a Gypsy Boy
Lay,” and “Hail Smiling Morn.”

After the Normal she got a school at Indian Head,
west of Brandon, where she took the train; it was I who
drove her the thirty miles and very proud I was to be
trusted with the horse and buggy. I wanted to stay the
night in Brandon where I could perhaps go to a concert
or a theatre but mother forestalled that by telling me I
must drive back five miles on my homeward way and
stay at Mrs. Spicer’s Stopping House which was a “much
nicer and safer place for a fourteen year old girl than a
city hotel.”

So I did this and still felt very grown-up and happy
to be travelling on my own and paying my way like a
seasoned traveller. Mrs. Spicer’s unpainted and weather-
beaten house was a landmark in this part of the country
with its high pitched roof and long windows, and a wel-
come sight to the teamsters drawing wheat into the city
for Mrs. Spicer “set a good table.” She was a tiny little
woman with snow-white hair framing her rosy face,
and looked smaller still with her tall children around her,
not one of whom was less than six feet. But “Ma” was
the head of the house and directed all the outside activi-
ties as well. The morning that I was there sitting at
the family table I noticed one of the sons who came up
behind his mother’s chair and politely waited until she
had finished what she was saying and then he asked in a
subdued voice, “Ma, where is the ox-harness?” She told
him and returned to the story she was telling me about
the neighbo: across the ravine, who suffered from tooth-
ache, when she came to the country ten years before,
when there were no dentists or doctors to pull a tooth,

~

230 CLEARING IN THE WEST
and at last in desperation she heated a knitting needle

“Oh, but she was a caution!” Mrs. Spicer went on.
“Nothing could stop her; she got so lonesome once to see
a neighbor, she set out one day carrying the year-old
baby and leading her cow, determined to get over to see
Mrs. McVicar, who lived at Grand Valley, and when she
came to the river, what did she do but take off her clothes
and tie them on the cow’s horns and go through the
river that was pretty nearly too deep to wade, and then
on the other side, dressed up again and went on... . She
stayed a week with Mrs. McVicar, and I’ve often heard
them laugh about it... . People now do not know any-
thing about the hardships of pioneering, and it’s fine to
see the country advance. ... But I like to tell young
people what courage it took to come in here and get a

foothold. ... Everything is soft now for women to what
” it used to be. Now you can even buy your bread if you
want to. I hear the bakers in Brandon are going to run
a waggon out this way... . You wouldn’t think it would
be worth the trouble, for surely no woman minds baking
a batch of bread, though, of course, it would be a con-
venience in threshing time. Baker’s bread is flimsy
stuff though, all whitened and fluffed up with alum, and
there’s no nourishment in it. I’d be afraid to eat my
fill of it.”

In July, 1889, I wrote for my second class certificate
in Brandon, in the old school on Tenth Street.

If Hannah had been at home to help me I would have
gone more confidently to this ordeal. The algebra was
the worst, and with Hannah away teaching, I was fearful
of the result.

I had two new dresses and that helped me meet the
waves of this troublesome world. One was a brown
cashmere, with velvet collar, and lapels, made with a
basque and skirt, and the other one was a white barred
muslin with a pink sash. Mrs. Ingram had helped Mother

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 231

to make it. I had pink bows for my hair, too, which I
braided in two braids, and my white straw hat had a
pink ribbon that came down at the back with fish-tail
ends. I had two new sets of underwear with gordon
braid trimming, and a flounced petticoat of all over
embroidery.

Jack and I drove to Brandon in the buggy, and we
took a Miss Freeman with us. Miss Freeman was a Nova
Scotian school teacher from the Oak Creek neighborhood,
with dark eyes, and that lovely Halifax way of speaking
which I secretly admired. She seemed to be quite a
woman of the world to me, being as much as twenty-one
years old.

Miss Freeman and I shared a room on the top floor
of Mrs. Brock’s boarding-house on Eighth Street, a tall
narrow slice of new unpainted lumber which seemed to
have been built to fill in the vacant space between the
two business blocks. The lady proprietor refused to
make any reduction to us for sharing a room. “Oh, no,”
she said, “the wear and tear is just the same, and any-
ways I like to charge my boarders plenty and then I won’t
be begrudgin’ them.”

The first week of July in that year was as hot as an
oven. I had felt intense heat before, of course, but it was
wide-open country heat, windy heat that dried the sloughs
and cracked the ground, but the air was always fresh
and sweet with honest earthy odors. This was worse; for
the air here seemed polluted with perspiring human‘:
beings. I had never seen so many people in my life,
and I couldn’t understand the presence on the streets of
idle men, of all ages. Why did they not go home when
they had done their buying? They surely did not all
belong to the city.

The nights were very uncomfortable, for our room
up under the roof grew hotter and hotter, and each morn-
ing I seemed to be more fatigued than when I went to
bed.

John D. Hunt, now of Edmonton, Alberta, was the

232 CLEARING IN THE WEST

presiding examiner, and on Tuesday morning he giad-
dened us by telling us we had all passed our geography
examination, written the day before, for he had set the
questions and had read the papers. I believed I would
make a pass on everything but algebra, and it did not
come until Friday morning.

On Thursday night I tried to study, but there seemed
nothing I could do. Then I tried to resign myself to my
fate, thinking of Mary Queen of Scots, and Anne Boleyn
and other beautiful ladies who had gone to the block
“every inch a queen”. I took off my clothes, put on my
white cotton night dress (long sleeved and high necked),
and knelt at the window with my head on the sill, and
prayed for deliverance.

Down below on the street came the Salvation Army
with their fife and drum and cymbals. A woman began
to sing in a thin clear voice, piercing through the noises
of the street:

“Do you fear the gathering clouds of sorrow,
Tell it to Jesus, tell it to Jesus,
Are you anxious what will be to-morrow,
Tell it to Jesus alone!”

Then the chorus joined her with all their instruments.
Was I anxious? Iwas. I was more than anxious, J was
desperate, but as they sang on I was conscious of a stream
of comfort and assurance coming to me. I grew calmer
and, strange to say, cooler. I would do my best.... I had
done my best. ...I had wrestled with my algebra as
Jacob with the angel, and now if I perished, I perished!
I fell asleep with my head on the sill.

The next day came the algebra test, and I spent
the three hours on it. It was terrible. So many ques-
tions contained words I had never heard. But I
worked on and on, and did not turn in my paper until I
heard the sound of the bell.

There were nine of us writing and we met on the
steps when all was over, and held a post-morten on the

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 233

paper. John R. Gregg, now a lawyer in Winnipeg, had
the only smiling face at the meeting. John R. had writ-
ten exams before and could look any problem in algebra
in the face. He had the answers written on his paper and
he passed it around. I saw I had three right—but I
handed the paper back to him before looking at any
more. There were ten questions and forty per cent. was
a pass. I did not want to cut the last string of hope. ...
I wanted to be able to think I had passed.

Bob Naismith was in the other room writing, and
when I came down the steps and met him coming out I
could see he was feeling low in his mind too. He had
been writing his literature test. Neither of us felt like
eating so we walked around to the Trotters’ livery stable
and got his horse and buggy, and we drove out in the
country a few miles. We had only one more exam,
“Writing”, at three o’clock that afternoon.

The air was a little cooler, and the country was beauti-
ful with wild roses and tiger lilies, while the air carried
the scent of mown hay and sweet grass and wild clover.
The cattle on the meadows looked peaceful and secure,
untouched by fear or failure. I had never seen much in
a cow’s life before, but that day, still stinging from the
blows of the algebra paper, I envied them with a deep
and earnest envy.

I told Bob about the Salvation Army the night before,
and how sure I was that the hosts of heaven would be
with me, just as they were round about Elisha and his
young man at Dothan; and how I had slept without fear,
and gone into the room to write like a conqueror.

But that paper! with its unknown terms; God had
nothing to do with setting that paper—and the killing
part of it was that these problems would be simple enough
if I had known what they meant. Mr. Schultz had worked
so hard to get me through, too. ... and I had perished
for lack of some little insignificant bits of knowledge.

Bob contended that he could not believe that I had
failed. Even if I had gone low in algebra, I would have

234 CLEARING IN THE WEST

such good marks in the other subjects that they would
not hold me back.

“Anyway”, he said, waving his hand to indicate the
countryside, “examinations are not everything. Look
out there. Look at that field of wheat rising and bending
before the wind. You don’t have to pass an examination
to enjoy that... . If I fail, and I think the literature to-day
finished me, I am going to raise the best horses in the
country, big bays with three white feet and a star on
the forehead.

“I know,” I said. “You'll do it too, Bob. You'll get
married and have a happy home, and be the secretary
of the school district and go on just like your father,
with everyone coming to you for advice, and depending
on you. Your life is cut out for you, Bob, it lies straight
ahead, but mine isn’t. I will never get married. I’m
going to be like Queen Elizabeth and keep clear of en-
tanglements because I have work to do that I can’t re-
fuse. Life is easy for you, Bob—you will be all right
even if you do fail. You wouldn’t teach long anyway,
for your heart is in the farm. But I want to get a toe-
hold on the ladder of literature. This exam is the first
step, if I get this I can go on. If I have failed, what
will I do? I could come to Brandon and work for
my board and go to the Collegiate, but I am not smart
around the house. No one would keep me: I’m not like
Hannah or Lizzie who can do two things at once. They
can work and go on thinking, but I stop working. ... No
ene would keep me. But I have something in me that

Yy will not let me rest. I want to give people release from
their drab lives! This is not all of the life—this sow-
ing and reaping, cooking and washing dishes. There is
an inner life that can be deepened and widened. Frank
Kinley has it. So has Mrs. Kinley, it keeps that little
flickering smile on her face when her body is ground with
pain. Milton had it, and so overcame his blindness. I
caught glimpses of it in his poems and I want to pass it
on. Listen to this, Bob, and see if it does not make you

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 235

shiver with its beauty. I wish you had been taking
“Lycidas” with me all year; that literature you had is
dull stuff. Lycidas had been drowned and Milton is
mourning for him, but not without hope, for he knows
Lycidas will live again, but see how he says it:

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead.

Sunk tho’ he be beneath the watery floor

So sinks the day-star in his ocean bed

And yet anon, repairs his drooping head

And bricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

There’s comfort in that, and healing. That last line,
‘Flames in the forehead of the morning sky’, changed
something in me. ...I want to know more and more, and
so be able to lift the burden from people. We can’t:
change the facts of life. There’s sorrow and sickness
and death, binders break and horses get cut in barbed
wire, but these things can be softened and brightened
and lifted if we have a wide enough outlook. ...

“T like you, Bob,” I said, “because I can always talk
to you and tell you things which lots of people would think
were crazy. Wheat farmers are so intent on raising wheat
they have no time to watch the sunset or raise flowers,
plant trees, or do anything to make their homes beautiful.
Beauty has a power to heal and comfort people and help
them over the rough places in life. Mrs. Spicer told me
she had a bed of pansies the first year she was in the
country, and they kept up her spirits. But so many people
have nothing to look forward to, or take delight in.

You know how the McFaddens live—they haven’t
spoken for ten years—quarrelled over something, and
froze; and take a pride in their silence. . . . narrow, single-
track minds, with no outlet—prisoners of silence and
temper; and the poor little boys are living in that atmos-
phere, which is about as healthy as a dark cellar. ...

“T think about these things and I want to help. ...

236 CLEARING IN THE WEST

But I have no confidence in myself. I couldn’t talk to
most people, even if they would listen. ... I would
freeze over, too. ... and all my bright vision would fade.
so I think if I can get through now, go to the Normal, get
away and teach, learning all the time and getting older,
maybe people will listen to me, especially strangers. I
am afraid I shall always be an upstart to my own people,
though. ... They can’t forget how I ran away with the
boots, and left Hannah to mind the cows. Then they
lost faith in me over my story of seeing a green wolf on
the school section.”

“Never mind, Nellie,” Bob said soothingly. ‘‘I believe
you saw a green wolf. There are no green wolves, but
if you say you saw one, I’ll swear you did.”

I felt better after this, and when we drove back to
the city and went into a confectionery and had two dishes
of ice-cream with fruit biscuits the world had grown in
brightness. That was my first taste of ice-cream, and it
came at a time when not only my throat was dry, but
my heart had been scalded by that terrible algebra paper.

The next day, Saturday, I drove home with Bob. I
remember what a lovely day it was, and how I wished the
road were twice as long. The country side was lush and
green, with fields of grain in the shot blade; cattle on the
meadows, wild ducks on the ponds, haymakers cutting
around the sloughs, groves of poplar trees turning over
their coin-like leaves, and all the brilliant flowers of July,
gaillardia, golden rod and wild columbine in full bloom.

It was a sublime world through which we travelled
that day, a world of abundance and sunshine, beauty and
hope. I like to remember it.

We talked about ex-premier Norquay who had just
died, and we hoped his enemies were sorry for what they
had done accusing him of playing fast and loose with
the Manitoba Central Railroad. He had tried to get it
for us, and done his best with the Government at Ottawa,
but his own followers had turned on him and broken his

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 237

heart. Oh well, God would know how it was; and wipe
out all his bitterness. He was an old man anyway—he
would be glad to have arest. So we thought of him. He
was forty-seven, but between fifteen and forty-seven
there is a great gulf of years.

We would not hear the results of the examination
until August. When I announced that I was afraid I
had gone down in algebra, Mother was very philosophical
about it. “Maybe it will be a good thing for you if you
have failed,” she said. ‘“You’re younger for your years
than Hannah, and it will be just as well for you to be at
home another year. You can go on studying here, and
it maybe will do you no harm to have a little of the con-
ceit taken out of you.”

I protested at that. I was not conceited, I said. Did
she really think I was conceited? She was shaping loaves
of bread for the oven, and stopped for a moment to settle
this fine psychological question.

“No, I don’t think you are”, she said at last, “but you
are very impulsive and talk too much for a young girl.
But the world will smooth you down, Nellie. It’s a great
teacher. The winds of the world shape us all. We’re
like the pebbles in the ocean that the waves move and
turn and buffet until they are smooth. It’s not always
pleasant, but we have to take it and it’s good for us.”

Hannah came home that summer from Kenlis and the
summer was delightful in spite of my anxiety. The crop
was coming along with a promise of being the best we
had ever had. My father believed money could be made
on fifty cent wheat, and it would be that much any way.

Life for me now had resolved itself into one question:
had I passed? If I had, I could go to the Normal. Mother
would buy me a new coat and cardigans, and I had three
dresses. Hannah’s books would do for me. If I failed I
would have to get to Brandon for a few months at the
end of the term, and try again. I hated the thought of
working for my board! not that I minded the work, but
I had no confidence in my ability.

238 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I alternated between the two moods. When I thought
I had passed I radiated goodwill to all the world; washed
dishes with great heartiness, singing as I worked; looked
affectionately on the house and farmyard,even sentiment-
ally; now that I was about to leave it... .

But in my moments of discouragement, how I hated
the work in its endless circle; carrying water in and out;
pulling lambs-quarters for the pigs; feeding the hens,
peeling potatoes, weeding the garden. Not one part of the
work had any permanence; it all had to be done over and
over.

It was drawing near the fatal day. I would soon know.
I had gone to Millford alone that Saturday for the mail
and groceries, driving our gray pony in the buggy. The
examination reports might be out.

My heart was beating into my throat when I went into
Mr. Errett’s store, which was also the post-office; and I
did my buying first, the nails, sugar, tobacco for the men,
tea and pepper, before asking for the mail. If I had failed
I would know soon enough. I saw Mr. Errett going in
behind the rack where the mail was kept.

“Nothing for your people to-day, Nellie, but a post-
card.” I took it from him and caught the address, Miss
Nellie L. Mooney. Then I read the sweetest words I had
ever seen on paper: “Having passed the recent Second
Class Teachers’ Examination, you are eligible to attend
the September to February session of the Normal School
at Winnipeg, etc. ...

The road was paved with gold and every clump of sil-
ver willow burned with fire as I drove up from Millford.
God had heard my prayer. The Salvation Army was
right. I had cleared the first hurdle and was out in the
open. Let the winds of the world blow now, let the hurri-
cane roar. I would meet them with my head up!

The countryside that day as I came home, is etched on
my memory. Now that I was about to leave it, it be-
came very precious to me. When I had climbed the long
grade of Oak Creek’s bank, and came up to the open

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 239

country, rich now with the burning colors of harvest,
James Duffields’s house lay on my right, a tall bare house
sitting on the edge of the hill, with a drop to the river
below; a sad looking house, with drawn _ blinds.
Then when I turned south I passed Arthur Rinder’s scat-
tered buildings; poor Arthur who loved his horses so,
and even then saw their final defeat by machinery, and
mourned it bitterly.

Beyond, to the west, were Tom Ailsby’s house, my
brother George’s, and still farther, now a tiny speck
against the horizon, was my sister Lizzie’s little new
house, the pinkness of its raw lumber dulled a bit by its
two years of wind and weather. The houses all looked
very small in the great expanse of prairie, brave little
outposts, fortifications against winter’s cold and sum-
mer’s heat. I loved them all, and all the people who lived
in them, with their sore problems, their disappointments
and strivings. In my new expansiveness I vowed I would
not forget them when I came into my kingdom. The

grand mood was on me and I wanted to do something .

for my people here.

Everything about these farms had a demanding look,
a clamorous, imperative voice. Cows coming up to the
bars to be milked, pigs squealing in their pens, hens step-
ping up to the door to see what was causing the delay in
their feeding time, men working in the fields, getting
hungrier every minute. And it was the women who were
responsible for everything. They must bake bread and
peel potatoes for the men, pull pig-weed for the pigs, boil
wheat for the hens, and save the crusts and the peelings
for them, milk the cows, keep everything clean, and
raise a family in their spare time.

I drove in to see Lizzie; I must tell her the great news.

“ft am so glad, Nellie,” she said in her generous way,
“but you deserve to succeed. . .. It will be bare
without you, you have always meant a lot to me....
There is something tragic about a family scattering, one
is taken and the other is left. You and Hannah are away
now, we shall see you only in the holidays.”

240 CLEARING IN THE WEST

She looked pathetically young as she stood in her little
house with its bare scrubbed floor. Lizzie was always an
immaculate house-keeper and loved pretty things. That
little square front room with its three windows hung with
white muslin curtains; the black cookstove set on a
square of galvanized zinc, the rocking chair with its log
cabin cushion, the bedroom beyond, with a chintz covered
box-seat, the little footstool made of seven tomato cans,
the home-made dresser with a mirror hung above, the
home-made mat... . I wondered if it satisfied her. Of
course all farm houses are built on the hope that some
day beautiful houses of many rooms will be built and
life will be easier. Every woman has that hope at the
very core of her heart.

I wondered if this little house felt like a prison to
Lizzie as it would to me. I knew she would miss me
but I would write often and send her books and magazines
when I began to earn money.

When I reached home I found the peaceful waters of
our domestic life stirred to its depth by the loss of a
monkey wrench, and I had been the last person seen with
it. My return had been eagerly awaited; the delay in
my return commented on. It seems the whole family
activity was held up by the absence of the monkey
wrench. I got out of the buggy feeling my exaltation
leaving me. I was deflating like a punctured balloon.

I had been using the monkey wrench to tighten the
nuts on the buggy before I left and had carelessly left it
in the buggy and so took it with me. I was in wrong
with everyone. It was almost as bad as the time I had
absconded with the boots. There were uncomplimentary
prophecies made concerning my future, the shortness of
my term at any school.

Knowing what I did, I made no reply to anything, no
defence. The hour of my deliverance was at hand. I
could afford to be silent. And besides I was sorry about
taking the wrench with me.

I unhitched the pony and put away the buggy with-

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 241

out a word, and I could see my silence was disconcerting,
I had both Mother and Jack wondering.

I took the pails and went out to milk, still wrapped in
this mantle of silence. No, I had not eaten at Lizzie’s,
but I was not hungry. I would get something after the
work was done.

It was pleasant to be out in the pasture with the
cows. My people would be sorry for the things they had
said when I was gone. At the moment I was pretty sure
I would never come back. J would send a box of monkey
wrenches instead. Mother and Jack were going to make
it very easy for me to leave. And I would tell them so,
I would tell them. Now that I was independent of them.
The years of bondage were coming to an end, and not a
minute too soon. I would have my liberty. Even if I had
to go out and work for the money to take me to Normal.
Liberty! Now I longed in that stormy hour for liberty. .
I wanted out.

“°Tis liberty alone that gives the flower of fleeting life
its lustre and perfume,
And we are weeds without it.”

I remembered that from Cowper’s task.

When I finished milking the last cow and was walking
into the milk house, Jack came out of the kitchen. I
hoped I looked pale and wan. I tried to wear a sad proud
look. He sat on the step of the milk house door as I
strained the milk. Neither of us spoke. Then he burst
out, “Say, kid, did you fail?” I worked on for a few
second without speaking. If I could give him a few bad
moments, I would.

My silence frightened him, he thought I was crying.
“Never mind, Nellie,” he said, in a voice that was new to
me, “don’t take it so hard. You’re young, and remember
this, you have the education. No one can take that from
you; you’re better off than I am. ... I was always too
ready to work and pretended I did not care about going
to school. I wanted to be a man, drive horses, team out

242 CLEARING IN THE WEST

the grain, but I did care. At least I care now. I’ve been
a big fool in some ways.”

I went over to him and sat down on the step beside
him. In that moment every bit of resentment I had ever
felt against him passed away, never to return.

“Jack,” I said, “I was just acting mad about the mon-
key wrench and I’m sorry I took it, and I’m sorry I’ve
been so ‘lippy’ with you.” I couldn’t think of any other
word. “You and I will get on better now. I always
thought you were picking on me... . You’re only twenty,
Jack, and lots of people who knew nothing at all have
educated themselves after that. You’re smart too, and
there is not a boy in the country who can hold a candle to
you for good looks.”

He shook his head sadly. “There is always something
to do on a farm if you’re willing to do it. I’ve been too
willing. You were blessed by having a saving streak
of laziness. You wouldn’t piece quilts or crotchet, or knit,
and you raised a row when you had to stay at home from
school, but I hopped in and did a man’s work since I was
fourteen. I wanted to be a big fellow. I wanted to be
praised for my strength and hardiness. I wanted to face
the wind and show that I did not care if my ears did
freeze. Going to school was too tame for me after team-
ing wheat to Brandon. I’m not blaming anyone. I was
stubborn and wanted my own way, and, unfortunately,
got it.”

We talked on and on. I never knew Jack until that
night. I should have finished straining the milk for it
was cooling in the pails, and the cream was rising, but
neither of us thought about it. Something more precious
than cream was rising in our hearts, a mutual respect,
friendship and understanding that has travelled with us
down the years.

The frost came early that year and crushed the crop
beneath its iron heel. There would be cattle-feed in plenty
but not much grain that could be sold, and there would

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 243

be very little money after the bills were paid. I could not
expect to go to Normal now, and my heart was heavy; a
year is so long at fifteen.

But Hannah had money and came forward with an
offer to finance me; and Lizzie, too, came to my aid in the
matter of clothes, and by September the first I was away.

The train from Glenboro left at five o’clock in the
morning, having a long one hundred and thirty miles to
travel before night to reach Winnipeg. In order to be on
the station platform in time, I went to Glenboro the night
before and stayed with Emily Bell, at the home of Mr.
and Mrs. R. S. Thompson. Emily who now lives in San
Francisco, had gone to Northfield School for two years
and had been my blithe companion on the two-mile walk
night and morning; and I knew she would share her bed
with me. Emily was a lovely blonde with braids of golden
hair, white even teeth, and a lilting laugh.

I don’t know whether Emily and the Thompson fam-
ily were informed of the fact that they were going to
have a visitor or not. But I can remember their friendly
welcome, and that Emily and I talked until the roosters
began to crow.

Mr. Thompson had been the Liberal member of the
local legislature for years, not from any help given by |
the voting members of our family, and from that fact
came my first conviction that women should vote. -%

Opposing Mr. Thompson seven years before was a
young lawyer from Winnipeg, whom we had not seen until
he came out electioneering. My brother Will, who was
an ardent Conservative, drove him around to the meetings
and spoke for him too. But my mother was against the
young city man and openly hoped for Mr. Thompson’s
election. This led to much stormy argument and one
day when the conversation was heated and loud, I tried
to find a basis of agreement by telling my mother that
she and Lizzie could vote for Mr. Thompson anyway. It ;
was then I heard the bad news that women could not vote |
at all. No woman anywhere; and I knew there was some- *

244 CLEARING IN THE WEST

thing wrong about that, and said so until I was compelled
to hush my talk.

At five in the morning I began my all day journey
to the city; a glorious day for me. I was dressed in a
green cloth dress with brass buttons and bound with
black military braid; I had money (carefully sewed into
my chemise) to pay a month’s board bill and buy books;
fine new goatskin buttoned boots on my feet, black cash-
mere stockings, a crotcheted petticoat blue and yellow in
a V-pattern, with a white one over it and kid gloves on my
hands. I had a coat of dark gray heavy cloth with a high
storm collar and lapels that would button over, lined with
red flannel, and a home-made red and black “cloud” to
wear in the cold weather. When I found that most of
the girls at the Normal had fur collars on their coats
I grew very much ashamed of my “cloud” and did not
wear it until both ears had been frozen.

The long day on the train was a delightful experience,
full of new scenes; little towns of bright new lumber and
once in a while a great red water-tank running over;
long stops at each of the towns when the conductor went
into the station to see the agent. We could see them
through the window. The train carried the freight too,
being of the kind known as ‘‘Mixed.” So there were pigs
to be loaded and cattle, and the length of the train grew
as the day went on.

It was strange to see how many idle men there were
around the stations, the platform swarmed with them.
I did not know that I was looking at the solid citizens of
the little towns, who had come over to see the train come
in, and who counted this time well spent. The post-
master walked apart with his canvas bag of mail, and
sometimes someone brought a letter down and handed it
to the mail clerk, and I wondered what the postmaster
thought of that.

At Elm Creek we went back on the spur line to Car-
man, and after picking up the exports from Carman,
came back to the main line. The country we journeyed

WHEN THE DOOR OPENED 245

through had low-lying marshes and monotonous levels.
Not one part of this country seemed to me as interesting
as our grove-dotted prairie with its encircling hills, and
again I thought of my brother Will’s good judgment when
he made the choice.

I think it was dark when we reached the city, but I
was again in an exalted mood. The brakeman had talked
to me. Came right over and sat opposite me; a hand-
some man with a black moustache and beautiful eyes. He
said I was young to be going to Normal and that I would
be homesick. I thought of the “dark man” in “Meadow
Brook,” whose clear-cut, noble yet sad face seen on a
train changed the whole life of the heroine. Suitors came
and went, but her heart remained steadfast to her ideal.
I wondered if he looked like Mr. Thompson, the brakeman.

Of course I was not looking for a handsome face in the
crowd or anywhere, nor was I ever going to fall in love.
I was pursuing knowledge and believed I could do this
only with a single mind.

I went to board with a family from Owen Sound, con-
sisting of the father and mother and two boys younger
thanI. There was a grown-up daughter but she had gone
to Vancouver and I had her room. It was with some
misgiving on the part of the mother that I was let into
this sanctuary where everything had a drape or a bow
of ribbon.

“You know Margery is so feminine,” she said, when
she conducted me upstairs, “and so beautiful, really Nel-
He such beauty is an embarrassment to a girl. Men fall
in love with Margery at first sight; she can’t go out but
some man follows her.”

I expressed my wonder and sympathy.

“Oh, but she will make a brilliant match, I know.
It’s her eyes, they shine like stars; you will be careful of
her things; nearly everything here is a present. One
young boy in a bank got wrong in his accounts just be-
cause he would buy her a necklace—wasn’t it a pity, the
foolish, foolish lad.”

246 ‘ CLEARING IN THE WEST

“Is he in jail?” I asked, much mofe~tntersted in the
boy than in the irresistible Margery.

“His father came to his assistance,” she replied
somewhat stiffly. I knew she did not like the direction
of our conversation. “My, but you are like your Mother,
Nellie,” she said somewhat brusquely, “in manner more
than in face.

“I hope I am like her in some ways,” I said. I sud-
denly realized that mother would never rave over a
daughter’s beauty or her conquests, even if one of us had
been a raging beauty, carrying scalps at her belt, and I
was grateful to her for her good hard sense. I thought
about the deluded boy in the bank, and again saw what a
curse love was. Men could suffer too; that was another
aspect of the prairie chicken dance.

When we went out together my landlady often
pointed out to me Margery’s disappointed suitors.

“Do you see that man in the buggy there Nellie, yes,
with the beard. He wanted Margery to elope with him.
He told her he would give up everything for her. He is
a great surgeon here. He begged her, on bended knee,
to fly with him. Yes, he’s married and has a family. It
is terrible. My heart aches for him. ... Don’t look at him
now, he might see us... . I’m afraid sometimes he may
do something desperate.”

The bearded gentleman, driving by, did not look to
me like a broken-hearted swain, but I soon learned that
these thrilling romances of Margery’s conquests were
Mrs, C-———’s golden stairs to paradise. I did not know
anything about the psychology of release but I knew
that the glamorous Margery, and the prospect that she
might make a brilliant marriage which would lift the
family fortunes, tided her mother over the bleak places in
her own life, and they were many.

So I am glad to remember that I took the stories
without asking upsetting questions. I knew there was a
pathetic background in her vain imaginings, as there was
in Mrs. Burnett’s little song to her children of “Grandpa
will come with the wo-wo.”

CHAPTER XXX.
WINNIPEG IN 1889

THE Normal was held in the Stobart Block on Portage
Avenue, one flight up. We made our way through an
unheated warehouse where furniture was stored, lovely
chairs, couches, and a whole library bearing the name-
plate of “Brydges.”

I was the youngest person at Normal except a bright-
eyed, red-cheeked Icelandic girl, named Buarg Buargson,
who knew but little English. She had been in Canada
only six months but made such rapid progress that be-
fore the Normal term was over, prepared and read a
paper on Iceland, that held our close attention for an
hour.

The Normal had two rooms; I was in the larger room
where the second class students received instruction from
Mr. W. A. McIntyre, though the Principal, Mr. Goggin
gave us logic and talks on deportment. The days I spent
there, five months was the term, were days of pure de-
light. New books on psychology, history of education,
school management and other aspects of the profession
of teaching, all smelling delightfully of new paper and
ink, were carried by me back and forth in a new leather
bag, and studied with rapture.

We would not be sent to the schools for two months,
but classes came in and we saw model lessons taught;
and the days went by so quickly I dreaded the end. I
was learning, I could see my horizon widening. I was
learning how to think. We had debates every week and
memory gems every day, and these we wrote in a book
in our best writing. (This book is still one of my trea-
sures.)

When we were sent to the schools, Margaret Neilson

247

248 CLEARING IN THE WEST

and I were paired off, and we stood against the wall for
two weeks observing and going from school to school.
I remember the dull acrid smell of these rooms, chalk,
carbonic acid, onions, and unwashed humanity; but I
did not mind it then. It was part of this new life that
I had been permitted to enter.

Miss Nimmons, who taught Grade Two in the Carle-
ton, became my ideal, with her lovely gray eyes, soft
brown hair and beautiful dresses. She must have read
the dog-like devotion in my eyes, for she invited me to
dinner one night to the big stone house on the river-bank.

Agnes Laut had gone to the Normal the year before
and was teaching in the Carleton School, too, and one of
the first lessons I taught was in her room. Such perfect
discipline I had not seen. I think her pupils adored her.
And when near the end of a term, I was sent to substitute
in her room, I had three happy days. The sickness of a
teacher became the opportunity of a Normal student;
and three dollars a day was wealth to us. I got many
days in this way. I suppose Mr. Goggin gave me the
work because I was one of the few students who were
boarding. The others lived at home.

My greatest humiliation at this time was my lack
of knowledge. I had read so little and the others seemed
to have read everything. When they talked of D’Artigan,
Charlemagne, Ivanhoe and Sairy Gamp, I had to sit silent
and ashamed.

At lunch time they all went home except Ellen Walker
and myself. Ellen, who was one of the First-Class
Students, and the daughter of an alderman, did what
she could for me, pitying my dark estate. Ellen also
shared her lunch with me and gave me my first sight and
taste of celery. I knew about it, but just as a word. It
was in the list of Vegetables in the Spelling book. The
taste of celery still brings back that upstairs room and
my sense of having entered a new world of bewildering
fascination.

Main Street in Winnipeg was a gay and exciting spect-

WINNIPEG IN 1889 249

acle on Saturday nights in the winter, with the clip-clop
of the horse’s feet, the passing street cars, horse-drawn,
their windows all alight and the radiance of the shop
windows lighted by great coal-oil hanging lamps. The
drug store windows with their showbottles, green and
gold and red, always drew my astonished gaze; I liked to
believe they were costly jewels and not just glass bottles
filled with colored water.

Then there were barber poles like great candy sticks,
turning and winding their red and white stripes. Best
of all was the thrill of seeing the aristocracy driving by,
brown buffalo robes with red flannel scalloped edges
thrown over the backs of their cutters, and a driver on
a high seat with a round cap of fur, his fur coat fastened
with snaps and straps like a bit of harness, the silver
sleigh bells jingling melodiously as they passed. We
sometimes saw the passengers alight, and got glimpses
of party dresses held up daintily, showing fur boots on
little feet.

We often went into Richardson’s book store to get
warm at the big heater, where a good fire glowed behind
the shects of mica, and there was always plenty to feast
our eyes on there; the sheet music strung across on a
wire, riding horizontally but showing, when we held our
heads sideways, lovely ladies at pianos with young men
in tail coats bending gracefully over them, and yellow
moons rising over snowy mountains, and summer scenes
where boats glided under bending willows and ladies with
reat flower-laden hats, trailing white hands through the
blue water. Then the books! tables full of them, shelves
bursting with them; Pansy and Elsie books, and the
Leather Stocking tales, and sets of Dickens and Scott and
Dalzae and Ouida.

My only comfort in looking at such wealth was that
some day I would be able to buy them all.

Just before Christmas I did buy “The Traits and
Stories of the Irish Peasantry,” by Will Carleton, and
brought it home for my father, who loved every page of

250 CLEARING IN THE WEST

it. I had had a day’s substituting and so was in funds.
I was not wishing any harm to the Winnipeg School Staff,
but, if the Lord, in His wisdom, should see fit to lay one
of them on a bed of languishing, and Mr. Goggin would
send me to teach in her place, I would return to this
house of enchantment and buy more. By the laying low
of Miss Hill, with mumps, I was able to add Edward
Bellamy’s “Looking Backward” and “Twenty Leagues
under the Sea” together with Longfellow’s poems to my
small store. I was hoping Miss Hill would have her
mumps first in one jaw and then in the other, but she
took a short turn on me and got it all over at once, and
so I got only two days out of it.

We had a picture taken one night coming home from
the Normal, Helen B. Hislop, Belle Poole, Helen Cawston
and myself, a tin type. We carried our books to show
that we belonged to the literati.

Some of the older girls had beaux and talked about
them to each other with much high-pitched laughter,
which sounded very foolish and undignified to me; I be-
lieved that all affairs of the heart should be embalmed in
decent silence. One of the girls had an unrequited pas-
sion for Mr. McIntyre, our teacher, and wrote verses to
him in school hours. I sat near her, and she often showed
them to me. Some of the girls laughed about her; but it
was all terrible to me. She told me she would gladly die
if she thought he would come and drop one tear on her
dead face. ... Years afterwards, I met her at the Winni-
peg Exhibition, a portly young matron standing beside
the merry-go-round on which three of her children were
riding. I took it for granted that she had recovered.
We did not speak of it; we discussed the relative merits
of Steedman’s and Steadman’s teething powders.

Mr. Goggin’s talks to us on Friday afternoons must
have been miracles of tact and truth. I can’t remem-
- ber how he did it, but I know he inspired us with a love

’ -for the English language, pure and undefiled, a desire to

_ walk with dignity and grace; to love righteousness and

WINNIPEG IN 1889 251

eschew evil, even the appearance of evil, and to dignify
our profession. He glorified soap and water, and im-
pressed on us that toothbrushes were better than face-
powder. Only in one instance do J recall his words. At
parting, he said, ‘“‘Demand decent salaries, and wear clean
linen.”

At the Normal and in our section, there was a Miss
Dale, who boarded on Jemima Street (now Elgin Avenue)
and who began to have her lunch with Ellen and me when
the weather grew colder. We often walked home to-
gether. There was a horse-car on Notre Dame and one
on William, but walking was cheaper. I decided to go to
board with her in December. My room at the Kate
Street house was too cold to study in now that the real
winter had come.

Then I began to go with Miss Dale to the First Baptist
Church, where the Rev. Alex Grant was the preacher,
and where the great friendliness of the people amounted
to a rollicking joviality which I enjoyed.

One night Mr. Grant spoke from the text, “Be sure
your sin will find you out,” a wonderful sermon, dramatic
and rather awful. He was the athletic type of preacher
who wiped his glistening face, threw his arms about,
took off his coat, kicked a chair out of his way, made
faces, gesticulated, but never forgot what he was putting
over to his people.

His wild ways fascinated me though I did not like
that sort of preaching, and wondered why my quiet and
dignified Miss Dale should be so keen on it, “He’s a
mighty man of God,” she often said in her meekly posi-
tive way.

Suddenly as I listened to him that night, I had all the
sensation of a lost soul. I did not see it coming. I had
no bitter sins to account for, though I did run off with the
boots and I forgot the monkey wrench in the bottom of
the buggy, and I lied to save Nap, but I always felt that
debt had been paid in full. But that night in the Baptist
church I became conscious of sin, not isolated sins. It

252 CLEARING IN THE WEST

was Sin, black, heavy and cold that clutched my heart.
I had all the loneliness and isolation of the damned; and
when Mr. Grant asked all who felt the need of prayer to
stand up, I stood. I think there were others, but I am
not sure. I knew I needed anything I could get. There
was an after meeting and some noisy conversions. I had
every sensation of spiritual sea-sickness. My heart was
as heavy as lead.

We walked home without a word, but I knew Miss
Dale understood how I felt. When we went upstairs
she began to talk to me in her sweetly persuasive way.
She said we were all sinners until we came under the
sacrifice of Christ, and then we became free and that
there was no other way to find peace. “Lord I believe,
help thou my unbelief,” she said had been the text that
floated her to shore, when she found herself just where I
was, lost and alone. I am always grateful that I found
so wise and gentle an interpreter. She did not make any
emotional appeal to me, but simply explained to me the
plan of salvation. Perhaps it was my knowledge of her
unselfish life, her kindly spirit, that made me want to be
like her. I told her so and we shook hands solemnly.
Then she told me we had better pray about it.

That night I slept a new sleep of great refreshing;
psychologists may say it had a touch of hypnotism. But
I know I awakened in a new world, and to a new vision of
being in harmony with God.

The first change I noticed was that I was no longer
afraid of the dark or of the lightening or sudden death.
I was emancipated from all fear, and with that came a
buoyancy of spirit. Mr. Grant’s shouting and gesticula-
tions still bothered me, and I told this to Miss Dale. “He
is a revivalist,” she said, “and a great man in his own
way. He has a vision of a lost world. He sees the stream
of humanity drifting to the cataract and rushes out to
warn them. So he shouts and swings his arms... . If you
knew your neighbor’s house was burning, you would rush
over and scream the news; your voice might be very un-

WINNIPEG IN 1889 253

pleasant but you would not think of that. But this is
only one aspect of religion. It’s the beginning. Life is
progress and growth. People must choose their own.
Religion is largely a matter of temperament. The Bap-
tists think that Baptism is important as an act of obed-
ience, you might not interpret it as such. It is the spirit
that counts, not the form.”

I went back to Grace Methodist Church but I have
always been grateful to the Reverend Alexander Grant
and to dear Annie Dale.

The term closed the end of February but I went home
for Christmas thrilled at the prospect. Jack met me at
Glenboro, and we talked all the way home. I seemed
to have been away for years.

It was a glorious night of stars, but no moon, and in
the dim light the horses trotted along the road they
knew so well, their bells chiming cheerfully. “Mother
made me put the bells on,” Jack said, “She said there
could not be a real Christmas without sleighbells, but I
think that’s a sort of down-east notion.”

“T like them, Jack,” I said, “bells are like voices, and
you can imagine how glad she has often been to hear
these bells, through the dark and through the storms,
telling her her men were coming home... . It’s the law
anyway for teams to have bells or lanterns.”

“Yes,” he replied, “but half the teams on the road
have no bells. Billy Hawkins was stopped by a policeman
in Brandon and told he had to have sleigh bells attached
to some part of the harness, and so he got one bell and
put it on the end of his lines; so he is obeying the law, all
right.”

“That’s the difference,” I said, “between the letter
and the spirit. I wonder why people think it is smart
to evade the laws, that have good sense back of them
and are made for the protection of the public.”

I have had many occasions since for the same wonder.

Lizzie had made me a new dress, the prettiest one I

254 CLEARING IN THE WEST

had ever had, fawn ladies cloth, and Jack had bought me
a new pair of kid shoes with clear glass buttons.

We had a party one night while I was at home, and
Bob and Jack Naismith came and a visitor, Turie Kinley,
from North Dakota, Bert Ingram and some others.

“I guess you’ve pretty nearly forgotten us, Nellie,”
Bob said when we shook hands. The gulf of years divided
us now. It was all of four months since I had seen him.
Bob was still my first choice among all the boys I knew.
I would have been glad to have him in Winnipeg to show
the girls for he was a handsome boy with his fine blue
eyes and straight shoulders. He had a new suit too,
and a blue tie with a horse’s head set with ruby eyes
for a tie-pin, and from the upper pocket of his coat pro-
truded the hemstitched corners of a white silk handker-
chief.

The Doherty organ with a lamp on one side and a
blue vase filled with dried grasses and rose haws on the
other, standing diagonally across one corner of the room;
the new carpet with the spotted lilies and all the best
sofa cushions on the home-made lounge, and the long
white lace curtains at the windows freshly done; the
bright fire burning behind the mica windows in the round
stove; and the smell of coffee coming in from the kitchen,
showing that this was a real party, all combined to make
me well satisfied and quite proud of my home folks.
Most of all I was proud of the flow of conversation. At
our house we always had good talk.

Hannah and Jack had been at a wedding the week
before and Hannah had played the Wedding March; and
then been asked by the bride to sing, “When Gathering
Roses Look Out For the Thorns,” which some of the com-
pany who knew the bridegroom thought was a most
appropriate selection.

We played charades and the guessing game, and it
must have been half-past eleven when the party broke
up. I remember the songs we sang, “Clementine,” “The
Dying Nun,” ‘Nellie Gray’ and ‘Lily Dale’ and other

WINNIPEG IN 1889 255

touching melodies. The mortality rate among the song
heroines of that day was high indeed. They snuffed out
very easily... . one breath of cold air and then crape on
the door and a new mound on the hillside!

“She sat at the door
One cold afternoon
To watch the wind blow
And see the new Moon.”

That was enough. She was gone before the spring
flowers carpeted the fields or the robins had nested again.
The Dying Nun, too, was a sad story but we loved it:

“Let the air blow in upon me,

Let me see the midnight sky,

Stand back sisters from around me,
God! it is so hard to die.”

Then there was another about a young women of great
beauty and promise cut off in her prime, who answered
to the name of Maybelle:

“Maybelle, Maybelle, my beautiful pale proud wife,
You are sleeping alone ’neath the cold gray stone
While I lead a darkened life.”

And the recitations at that time were a bit on the sombre
side, too. The Dismal Swamp told the story of a young
man who had become crazed by the loss of his young
love and believed that she had gone to the Dismal Swamp
and that he was on his way to join her:

“Her firefly lamp I soon shall see,
Her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life will be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree
When the footstep of death draws near.”

Then, of course, we had “The Curfew Shall Not Ring
To-night” and the “Last Hymn” with its tale of heroism
on the high seas; and a fiercely dramatized one I had

256 CLEARING IN THE WEST

been taught by Mrs. Schutz, called “The Burning
Prairie.” American influence was shown in “Barbara
Fritchie,”’ which was one of Hannah’s offerings.

“Shoot if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

_(As I write this a forgotten radio at the other end of the
room is crooning away under its breath something about
smothered kisses and ladies gone in the dawn. I turn it
up to give it a chance to compete with the sad old songs
of long ago; and the words I get are these:

“I would give anything under the sun to get you
under the moon.”

I shut it off hastily and return to the melodies of other
days.)

CHAPTER XXXI.
My First ScHOOL

THE Normal closed at the end of January, and I had now
a Professional Certificate which would give a license
to teach during the pleasure of the Board; but I did not
avail myself of this privilege until August of that year.

Annie Dale had gone to teach near Manitou when the
Normal was over, and at the end of the first term was
offered the home school at High Bluff. To fill her con-
tract, she would need to find another teacher for her
school at Manitou, and so wrote to me. I put in my appli-
cation and was accepted.

T had stayed at home after the Normal closed, partly to
help around the house. Mother was determined that I
should do this for she thought I was too young to teach.
The time had gone quickly; Jack and I had been asked to
the parties in the neighborhood, and I had gone to one
public dance in the new town of Wawanesa, on the bank
of the Souris, five miles west of our farm, where the rail-
road crossed the river.

Mother had been quite willing that I should go to
the ball for Jack wanted me to go. That was sufficient
reason for her; and I have no doubt she was glad to see
that Jack and I had stopped quarrelling. Mother had
the Old-world reverence for men, and attributed to her
sons qualities of wisdom and foresight which, no doubt,
surprised them. She had no faith in my discretion at
all, and if I were out after sundown, she had visions of
disaster, especially train disaster. I was warned of the
train every time I went to Wawanesa. But if Jack were
with me, I could even go to a public dance-hall, which I
know she regarded as a wicked place, not so much be-

257

258 CLEARING IN THE WEST

cause of the dancing, but because, in a room adjoining
there were games, “with the devil’s books.”

“You should be proud to go out with your brother,”
she often said, “and it is very good of him to want to
take you.” I resented this, and after Jack grew up, he
did too; but we knew she couldn’t help it. It was part of
her day, and was partly caused by the fact that she had
never known the companionship of a brother; and had
never ceased to mourn for her two little brothers, who
had died in infancy, and whom she could not even re-
member.

On August 16th I left from the new station at Wa-
wanesa to ride the seventy-five miles to Somerset, where
I would be met by one of the trustees of Hazel School,
and driven the seventeen miles to his home, where I was
to board. My new tin trunk was in the baggage car,
and I had a check for it pinned into my alligator purse.
It was not more than half full—the trunk, I mean—al-
though it contained all my earthy possessions, and it was
securely roped as well as locked.

Hannah and Mother and Jack came to the station with
me and shook hands solemnly when we said good-bye;
Mother did not believe that kissing belonged to a public
farewell.

“Now Nellie’, she said, when we heard the high windy
whistle of the train on the other side of the river,
“You’re getting to be a big girl, and you are out in the
world. At the Normal you had teachers, but now
you are a teacher yourself, and you must keep that in
mind. Don’t talk, but listen, and don’t believe all you
hear, and don’t be afraid to admit you do not know. And
remember, no matter what happens to you, you can
always come home, and be welcome.”

We could see the train coming down the long grade,
on the other side of the river, its shrill whistle echoing
through the hills. It tore through me with a new and
rather terrifying significance. I was leaving home! It
was too late to turn back now!

MY FIRST SCHOOL 259

But when [ was in the train, which wound its way
through the wooded valley up to the plain again, and
looked across the long sweep of prairie flowing into the
sandhills of the Assiniboine to the east and north, and
picked out our house, and all the neighbors’ houses, seen
for the first time in this perspective, some of the exalta-
tion of the occasion came to me. I had longed for free-
dom, and now I had it!

It was a blue misted morning, heavy with the frag-
rance of ripening grain, and harvest flowers that the dew
has mellowed, golden rod, wild sage and gaillardia. I
stood out on the back platform holding to the rail, for the
road bed was still rough, and the train seemed to fly.
Its long plume of smoke was thrown from side to side
as the track twisted, obscuring at last the whole neighbor-
hood. At the other side of the train lay the rough coun-
try we called the Tiger Hills, with sloughs and hay mea-
dows and a few scattered farm houses. Soon it was all
new to me; and I was off and away in a strange world.

In many of the little places there was not even a
station, just a store and perhaps a lumber yard. I told
the conductor I had not been over the road before. and he
would have to see that I was put off at Somerset, for I
wouldn’t know it. He assured me he would see to this.

“No one would know Somerset,” he said, “it’s just a
stop; no more. There may be a horse and a haystack
and maybe not. But I’ll see that you get off. You’re
sure someone will meet you?”

I thought of what Mother had said, that I always
could come home, and I wished she had not said it. It
worried me, for it suggested a possibility I might fail,
and have to come home because I couldn’t manage the
school. Then I thought of poor Louie Smith, whom no
one had seen for months, and no one could ask for. She
had been working in Brandon, and got into trouble and
come home, and there was great sympathy for her
family.

For a few moments I had a panicky feeling of dread,

260 CLEARING IN THE WEST

the world seemed full of unseen dangers; what did I
know of this place I was going to? Of course Annie Dale
would be safe any place, safe as an angel; all the hosts
of heaven were around her.

I went out on the back platform again and sought
comfort from the open air, and the harvest sunshine that
lay on the fields. Horses in a pasture galloped away from
the train, snorting and full of terror. They needn’t be
so terrified. The train stayed on its track and pursued
noone. Life was like that too, I argued.

Then I remembered that I had three oranges given to
me when I said good-bye to Mr. Storey who kept the store
in Wawanesa. No one who had three oranges could be
entirely fearful or cast down.

I was put off at Somerset, in the bush, and was sur-
prised to see so many trees. There was no horse in sight,
but the haystock was there, and a new unpainted plat-
form, bare except for my trunk, which seemed to have
shrunk since I had seen it. I stood beside it and watched
the train as it pulled away in the distance; the conductor
standing on the platform waved back to me,

There was a house about a mile away which I could
see through an opening in the trees; and it gave me re-
assurance. I was sure I would be met by someone. The
rounded and slated top of my trunk wasn’t a comfortable
seat, so I got off and sat on the edge of the platform;
and time went on; a few mosquitoes came out of the bush
and circled around me, and I wondered if there were
timber wolves in this wild region. I could still see the
train for the track runs straight east from Somerset for
several miles. Its whistle came back lonesomely and
soon it dipped out of sight, though I could still hear its
rhythmic beat on the rails.

Having lived with people all my life, being one of a
family of six, this was my first time to be alone in a
strange place; and a new feeling not entirely unpleasant,
came with it. Time seemed to have suddenly stopped
here in this quiet spot, with its two parallel lines of steel

MY FIRST SCHOOL 261

leading in and leading out. This empty space, this sil-
ence marked the end of an era. The curtain had fallen
on the first act, and even if the audience grew restless,
there was nothing it could do but wait. The play would
goon. It was the first time in my life that I became con-
scious of the film of time that comes in, and goes out;
the future at one end, and the past at the other, with
only that split-second, ours to use, that changing line as
thin as paper, which we call the present. ... The drop
curtain ahead of me with its lines of steel leading straight

into the unknown .... and at last the turn of the road.
Life had picked me up and was carrying me along. I was
on my way.... into a new world.

I had no way of telling the time, and though it seemed
that I sat there for days, it may not have been more than
an hour. Then J heard the sound of wheels coming in
from the south, and a horse and buckboard came in view.
I stood up and waited.

“Did anyone get off the train here this morning?” the
driver shouted to me before he had reached the platform,
rather needlessly I thought.

“Yes,” I shouted back, “I did.”

“TI expected to meet the teacher for our school, she
was coming from Wawanesa, but by golly J’ll bet she
missed it, and I’ve had my trip for nothing, and in har-
vest time and all.”

J looked at him closely. I wondered if he were doing
what the English call chaffing. But his solemn German
face expressed only deep concern. He was a big man with
a hardy sunburnt face, and closely clipped moustache.

He was full of recriminations. “By golly, it’s no fun
being a trustee, I’ll tell you, and dealing with teachers.
They never know their own mind five minutes. We had a
dandy teacher, a real lady; but I knew she was too good
to last. She just stayed the six months and then got the
school at her home. And now we're sure in a fix, and all
the children will be there Monday. I’m going to get out

262 CLEARING IN THE WEST

of the hull thing, this is my last year, and they’ll never
get me in a box like this again.”

“Too bad,” I said, “but maybe you can give me a ride.
You came in from the south, didn’t you? Well, I’ve had
a disappointment too, I expected one of the trustees of
my school to meet me. Probably he did not read my Jet-
ter right, or forgot tocome. I suppose he'll get here some
time, but I can’t sit here another day.”

He got out of the buggy, and stepped up on the plat-
form. We looked at each other critically. Then I put
out my hand, “How are you, Mr. Hornsberg,” I said,
as pleasantly as I could, “fine day isn’t it?” He broke
into a laugh. “By golly,” he said, “I was wondering how
I was going to square myself for being late. I saw the
smoke of the train soon after I left St. Leon, and I’ve been
makin’ up my speech all the way. But you don’t mean to
tell me you can teach. You don’t look any more than
fifteen.”

He put my trunk in the back of the buckboard and
we set out; reaching a good prairie trail at last. Our
road lay through the French village of St. Leon, where a
Catholic church school and convent stood on the shore
of a small lake. The white-washed houses with bright
blue godrs and windows, swarmed with children, and dogs
ran after us barking. The houses stood close together on
the one little street, each with a square fenced garden
with sunflowers and corn, and the cabbage in neat rows.
A few poppies brightened the potato patches.

Flushes of garden scents, mignonette and healing
herbs came to us on the breeze; the leaves of the trees
made a gentle whispering, and stood like guardian angels
with their branches outspread above the little houses. I
sensed a peace of mind and tranquility; a vague heart-
healing that comes in churchyards and holy places, and
I would have been glad to sit beside the road and let this
dappled sunlight fall on me. I would go back some day
I thought, and refresh my soul in this sheltered, peaceful
concordant place; with its untroubled faith, its ordered

MY FIRST SCHOOL 263

resignations. Even the children standing inside the fen-
ces looked at us with quiet eyes.

The wells interested me, one at each end of the street,
each with a high windlass and a heavy stone in a canvas
bag on the end of the rope to help pull up the bucket.

Years afterwards, I saw many such villages in France,
with the same contrivance built over the well; the same
white-washed houses, blue trimmings and the same evi-
dences of thrift.

“Fine people, these French,” said Mr. Hornsberg, as
we drove slowly through the little street and around the
end of the lake, “and a grand religion they have. I think
Tl turn Catholic this fall when the work’s done. Their
God seems to do more for them. Of course they got to
pay; up early, beads, prayers, early mass and confession,
but they get results. See their fields and gardens, now
take a look at them, for they are the last crops you'll
see. All our stuff is flattened to the ground, hailed out-—I
forgot to tell you, we won’t be able to pay you, we’re
broke. But as I was saying it beats all how the Catholics
are favored, and I think I’ll put in with them. ... The hail
has made a clean sweep across our district, and the gar-
dens are flattened and black. There will be cattle feed
from the crops, and that is all. But we'll keep you, even
if you are not what we expected, and you'll get your
board anyway. So you'd better eat hearty, for the more
you eat the more you’re getting.”

I think my driver got quite a thrill of pleasure when
coming over a rise a new district lay before us with a
magnificent sweep of country falling away to the south,
and I asked in sincere admiration, “Who owns the fine
house?”

“That’s mine,” he said, “I mean its ours. My wife
works harder than I do.”

Then he laughed to himself and said, “I shouldn’t kick
too hard about the hail, we’ve had good years here, and
we should take one backset without howling. One failure
every five years isn’t going to kill anyone.”

264 CLEARING IN THE WEST

When we went in by the back door to the fine, big,
clean kitchen where Mrs. Hornsberg welcomed me, I
could see that he had good reason for his cheerfulness;
and I knew I had come to a pleasant place. The windows
were full, and not too full, of blossoming geraniums, red
and white;—-the stove shone black as ebony on a
yellow painted floor, a rocking chair with a bright chintz
cushion stood beside a table on which lay a book and a
knitting basket. The smell of Saturday’s baking, spicy
rich and moist, told me there were apple pies, and fruit
cake somewhere near.

Beyond the kitchen lay the dining room, the living-
room of the house, and here were more flowers, petunias,
predominating, and a hanging fuschia in a basket in one
window, and the white star of Bethlehem in another.
There were strips of rag carpet on the yellow floor, and
a fine big shining stove in the middle of the room. It
was not in use as a stove in the summer, but served as a
stand for a stone crock filled with yellow sunflowers. I
did not notice these details in my first glance, but I did
know that I had come into a pleasant hospitable house,
where order and cleanliness prevailed.

Esther, who was a few months younger than I, took
me to my room off the dining-room, and when I was hang-
ing up my coat and hat on the hooks behind the door,
she told me hurriedly: “This is my room, but the teacher
has always had it. Do you mind having me sleep with
you? I am very quiet and won’t kick... I can sleep up-
stairs, but I’d rather stay here. ... we’ve never had as
young a teacher as you.”

I knew afterwards that was a long speech for Ether
to make, for she did not exaggerate when she said she
was quiet. Esther stayed.

It was a pleasant room we shared with a big wide
oak bed, with a mattress and feather tick, and two huge
goose down pillows. In the daytime the bed had a blue
and white patchwork quilt which Esther always took off
at night and folding it neatly, put it way with the pillow-

MY FIRST SCHOOL 265

shams which matched. I suspected that this elaborate
set had been put on for my arrival, so I suggested one
day that they be put away for very special occasions.
Esther gladly did this, and told me her mother had made
them when she was married, and had given them to her,
“Though,” she said sadly, “I’ll never need them for Ill
always be at home. No man will ever look at me. I am
too quiet.” I tried to comfort her. I told her men liked
quiet women; it was a distinct advantage to be quiet, and
she was good-looking, and that was what counted with
men, I knew. I had three brothers, and I had heard them
talk.

She was interested but not convinced. ‘Mother was
married when she was fifteen,” she went on, “wasn’t it
awful? There’s only sixteen years between us. Dad is
ten years older....

Beyond the dining-room, across the square hall, was
the parlor, a square papered room with lace curtains on
its two long windows and a real carpet that covered the
entire floor. Here, between the windows and angling
across the corner stood the organ, another Doherty with
its music racks well filled with Czerny exercises and sheet
music, for Esther went every week into town for a les-
son from Miss Clarke. Esther took her music lessons as
seriously as she did everything in life, and every morning
when the alarm clock began its clatter she reached out
for it, deadening its din into a throaty gurgle. Dressing
herself without a sound, she went out, and began her
hour’s practice. And how luxuriantly rich I felt in being
able to turn over for another good hour’s sleep, all the
sweeter because of the five finger exercise, runs and
chords that mingled with my dreams.

There were book cases in the parlor filled with E. P.
Rowe’s and Pansy’s books, and an Elsie Dinsmore or two,
the Pilgrim’s Progress, Fenimore Cooper’s Leather Stock-
ing Tales, and Alexander Dumas’ sombre romances, and
years’ numbers of the Youth’s Companion and the Far-
mers’ Advocate. I always enjoyed reading aloud, and

266 CLEARING IN THE WEST

many a pleasant evening we spent in the big room with
a warm fire in the round stove, after the two little boys,
Tommy and Fred, had gone to bed. I remember especi-
ally how we enjoyed “He fell in love with his wife,” by
E. P. Rowe, in the reading of which Charley, fifteen years
old, took turns with me, while Esther crocheted, and Mrs.
Hornsberg knit, and Mr. Hornsberg stretched out on the
long brown sofa and slept.

Our evenings always ended in the same way; with
terrible regularity the head of the house wakened with a
loud shout soon after ten. “My landsakes alive Jenny,”
he would roar at us, “what do you mean, do you never
look at the clock? Here it is getting on to twelve o’clock,
and you let these crazy kids sit and read, and the teacher
has no more sense than the others. We’ll never get them
up to-morrow, its all we can do to get them started when
they go to bed in good time. .. . I can’t even fall asleep
without something going wrong.”

The first night this happened, I was frightened at his
violence, but that soon passed. He loved to rage and
roar and shout. When he kept it up too long, Mrs. Horns-
berg quieted him with a word, “All right, William, we
hear you.” Not once did I hear him answer back. Like
Esther’s touch on the alarm clock a word from his wife
stopped the uproar.

I learned something of German thrift and foresight
in the Hornsberg family. There was enough home-
canned vegetables in the dark cellar to last two years,
and so the hail which had destroyed the garden made no
difference to our meals. We went on eating green peas,
squash and cauliflower. The straw stacks were not
burned on this farm as they were by the neighbors, but
kept until the following year. So there would be cattle
feed, and there was hay stacks two years old. The out-
buildings too, were neatly painted and every bit of mach-
inery was housed when not in use. The cows were tied in
the stable at night, with a chain that came from a collar
around their necks and the end snapped into a ring above

MY FIRST SCHOOL 267

their heads, just long enough and no longer, so there
was no danger of an animal becoming entangled in the
tie chains. There were two good wells, each with a
pump, and the farm yard was kept clean of straw or
debris. The wood pile had the precision of a pile of cans
in a store window.

Sunday was the outstanding day of the week, prepara-
tions for which began on Saturday. Mr. Hornsberg was
not a member of the church but he was a zealous adher-
ent, and saw that the whole family was present at the
morning service. To usher them into the family seat,
take his place at the end, glower at the two young boys,
who sat next him, to dry up the last trace of frivolity,
dispose of his hat on the wires below the seat, and then
settle down to a quiet hour of close scrutiny, without once
turning his head, was one of the pleasures of his life.

Coming home, we heard a report of the congregation;
“Mrs. Sears has a new hat at Jast. I wonder how she ever
got old Abe to open up; and a pretty one. Gosh, but she
looks a lot better... . Still, I’m sorry you didn’t see the
old one. It was high at the back, and sloped down to the
front; had the look of a cow getting up. Do you know
a cow gets up different to a horse? Yes, I knew.

“Aaron Smith looked sour as vinegar to-day. He
traded a horse yesterday with Bill Jeffrey. Tl bet he
didn’t hear a word of the sermon, every place he looked
he’d see a spavin. Did you see the man two seats ahead
of us, the one whose neck is cracked like an alkali bed?
Pil tell you a funny think about him. He’s innocent
in his ways, says queer things. A man from town
went out to insure his life and told him that Charley
Brown, who had just died had a three thousand dollar
policy, and had only paid one premium; paid fifty-two dol-
lars and got three thousand, but Elias Smiley said, ‘oh,
well, I’d never be lucky like that!” ....

“Did you notice the family that whispered when the
sermon was going on. That makes me mad. If the min-
ister would check them for it, 'd give him two bags of

268 CLEARING IN THE WEST

oats. How did you like our choir? That big fellow can
sing, can’t he? It sounds like hollering into a rain barrel
but I always liked to do that. Mrs. Peters has a kind of
a zither to her singing, sounds like she has a fine tooth
comb between her teeth.”

The sermon was not included. Not being a member,
he said he didn’t set himself up to judge preaching, any
minister was good enough for him, for he kept all his
religion in his wife’s name anyway.

Life took on a new interest that first Sunday after-
noon when Esther, Charley, Fred and I went to Sunday
School. Esther and I went to one of the class rooms be-
hind the choir loft, to the Young Ladies’ Bible Class. We
lived three miles out of Manitou, and so we had to step
lively to get home from church, and have dinner, and get
back for the 3 o’clock Sunday School, but it was the thing
to do.

Now, this was a very particular Sunday, the first
Sunday for the new minister’s wife to teach the class.
The new minister had come from Port Arthur, Ontario,
and the Young Ladies’ Bible Class was waiting for her.

She was a beautiful woman, in her late forties, and
dressed exquisitely in a brown cashmere dress with
smocked yoke and cuffs, with a moonstone brooch to hold
her linen collar in place. She wore a velvet bonnet trim-
med with folds of silk that make me think of the rosy
tints of a winter’s dawn, opalescent in their changing
sheen; and her eyes! when looking into her eyes, I saw
the browns and greens and gold of the moss in the mea-
dow brook at home when the sunshine fell into its clear
stream.

The lesson I remember, was the story of the Prodigal
Son, and the group of 1890 flappers with their hair in
braids with the ends teased out, were not especially in-
terested in the Prodigal Son coming or going. So I, being
a teacher myself, and having sympathy for a fellow-
sufferer, fell upon the lesson with fervor. I drew lessons,
expanded thoughts, asked questions, repeated the golden

MY FIRST SCHOOL 269

text and was able to tell where it was found. Indeed, [
can safely say without pride, I was the best girl in the
class, and though I was probably detested by the others,
I saw gratitude in the teacher’s golden brown eyes, and
came home in an exalted mood, quite determined to keep
to this breakneck pace of proficiency.

The family at home were greatly interested when we
told them that the minister’s wife had taught our class.
A new minister’s wife is always “news.” Esther did her
best to describe her, but even though she described the
brown dress, velvet bonnet and moonstone brooch, I felt
her description lacked something, authority, or convic-
tion, or enthusiasm or something.

“In fact,” I said, “she is the only woman I have ever
seen whom I should like to have for a mother-in-law.”

Esther’s mother checked my enthusiasm by telling
me the minister’s wife had only two quite young boys.

I enquired their ages.

“Fourteen and ten.”

Then I pointed out that I was not quite seventeen, and
what was three years’ difference in ages anyway? It
would never be noticed when he was fifty and I was fifty-
three. Having put my hand to the plow, I was not going
to be turned aside by three little insignificant years.

CHAPTER XXXII.
WINDS OF THE WORLD

THE first days at school filled me with dismay. Nothing
came right, and all I had learned from Baldwin’s “School
Management”, seemed to have turned to dust and ashes.
I could not keep the forty children busy. I do not know
what I would have done without Esther and Charley, who
turned in generously and became my assistants. They
gave out spellings, put work on the board, took care of
disputes over pencils and books.

In a week I knew all the names, and had my time-
table working. But I felt ashamed of the way my Normal
Training had deserted me. I stayed after school each
evening and arranged my work as well as I could, and
having done all and hoping for the best walked home to
my boarding place, across the coulee. There was a fine
flat stone in the bottom of the coulee, and on it I sat each
evening, and meditated in great humility of spirit. I was
failing as a teacher. The Inspector would discover my
weakness, and he might come any day. Hazel School had
had good teachers. Miss Evilena Bell was the first, even
yet I heard echoes of Miss Bell’s good work. Then a Miss
Baker from Ontario, and Annie Dale, all experienced and
capable. . . . I would have to go home and admit my
failure. ...

It was hard to be sad on those warm bright September
evenings with the comfortable homely sounds, and sights;
cow-bells tingling, crickets chirping in the long grass,
the drone of mowers cutting the green feed, the rich
amber sunshine dulled with haze. These, and the pros-
pects of the good supper waiting for me, and all the
comforts of the white house, would have lifted my spirits,
but for that awful dread that I might have to go skulking
home—a teacher who could not hold a job—I saw no way

270

WINDS OF THE WORLD 271

of escape unless the school would burn. But nothing
could look more permanent than Hazel School, No. 365,
pale gray in color, with a black roof, standing on a little
eminence, secure, remote from harm with the sinking sun
kindling a flame on its three western windows, a flame
that glowed and gleamed, but would never consume it.
I knew there was no hope of deliverance by fire.

The school attendance had been helped by the hailed
crop, and so I had the peak load of students from the
first day. All the big boys and girls who in a good season
would have been at home for the harvest were coming
to school, and it seemed impossible to get time for all the
classes in the whole eight grades.

My difficulties were increased by the fact that nearly
all the families came from the same place in Ontario, and
carried with them into the new life, all the sins and sor-
rows of the past. They knew each other too well; and
some of the old grudges had their roots in the past genera-
tion. This led to fights on the school grounds, rather seri-
ous affairs, that worried me. In the heat of anger, the op-
posing factions went deeply into the past and dragged out
old skeletons, flung out old taunts and innuendoes, horrible
on the lips of children. After one of these bouts my senior
classes were demoralized, and even the little ones suf-
fered from the emotional upheaval.

An older teacher might have been able to suppress
these outbreaks but I was afraid to take a high hand with
boys and girls almost as old as myself. And I was disap-
pointed to note that “Feuds” were not listed in ‘““Baldwin’s
School Management.”

I knew the root of the trouble was in the homes where
these old sins were freely discussed. Drab lives crave
excitement and these neighborhood fights were the out-
let for suppressed emotions. I must find a healthier form
of excitement, or the school was headed for ruin. I could
not expect help from the trustees; they came from the
same place in Ontario, too, and were not entirely friendly
to each other.

272 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I had brought with me a copy of Dr. Edgerton
Young’s “My Dogs in the Northland,” and I read it for
ten minutes following the morning prayers to insure
punctuality. This began the day pleasantly for us.
With my first salary payment I bought a football, and pre-
sented it to the school, telling them that I was going to
play with them, and we would see if we couldn’t play with
good humor. If a fight should break out, the ball would
be locked in my desk for one day. I told them about the
English school boys (I had read Tom Brown’s School
Days) and how the Englishman’s sense of fair play and
good humor had won the admiration of the world. I told
them about the “Old Spites” in Ireland, and how the
“Fairs” were often the scene of bloodshed though no one
knew exactly what it was all about. I tried to make them
laugh at such foolishness which belonged to the age of
superstitions and ignorance, and had no place now in the
lives of sensible young people.

We drew up rules for the football games and every-
one had a voice in the making of these. Everyone played,
and the school room was deserted at noon by all but little
Libby Stiles, whose poor little white face looked wist-
fully out from the window. Libby had a weak heart.

So all went well for a couple of weeks, the football
took up all the surplus energy, and I began to hope. One
day, one of the girls came to me almost in tears, and told
me her mother had been over at Jeffreys, and Mrs. Jeff-
reys and her sister, Mrs. Miller, had said I should not play
football; it wasn’t a ladies’ game; and they were going to
speak to the trustees about it, and they thought the foot-
ball should be taken away for the children were just crazy
about it, and that’s all they were going to school for.

The next day I wore my longest and best dress, and I
went to see Mrs. Jeffreys. I had met her in Manitou one
day, and she had asked me to come over for supper some
night—one of these flat and wide invitations that mean
nothing—“Come any time,” she said. “I always have
plenty cooked.”

WINDS OR THE WORLD 273

She seemed to be pleased to see me in a constrained
sort of a way. She wore her wool challey dress and
brought out her spiced pears and many kinds of cake.

Mrs. Jeffreys was the mother of one boy of fourteen,
and step-mother to three others who were away from
home. So, having no children to keep her at home, she
went about more than the other women; and she had her
own driving-horse, which added to the evil she could do.
She was a positive woman, with a cut and dried opinion
on every subject. Her knowledge of the neighborhood
was profound, and the people were afraid of her. She had
her own money too, and that gave her an added import-
ance. I knew I had to have Mrs. Jeffreys with me, or my
scheme would fail. She would go to the trustees and raise
arow. The trustees were afraid of her too, and the old
spites would all be revived in added bitterness; although
J was sure now, that with the football and plenty of
stories, I could handle the situation if I were left alone.

After supper, Mr. Jeffreys and Frank went out, and
I helped her to clear the table and wash up. We were
getting along very well I thaught. I let her talk and list-
ened attentively, knowing even then that a good listener
is more sure of popularity than a good talker. I had no
finessc, no adroitness of approach. All I could do was to
put the case before her plainly and bluntly and in getting
the case started, I was somewhat hampered by the fact
that she wouldn’t meet my eye. She looked over and
around me with her darting black eyes.

At last I plunged in. I told her why I had bought the
football, why I played with the pupils, my distress over
their fights, and their slanderous charges. “It is hor-
ible,” I said, “to hear young boys and girls throw hints
and sneers across a school ground. It’s unnatural too;
they shouldn’t know these things. They hear too much
at home, and it’s all so useless and evil. These children
cannot help what happened in Zorra, and should not be
reminded of it. I think the best way to stamp out all
this nastiness is to give them something fresh and clean

274 CLEARING IN THE WEST

and thrilling to think about. A game of football ought
to be more interesting than the story of how one man’s
father opened a registered letter and lost his job twenty
years ago.”

“Who said that?” she cried, stopping her dish-wash-
ing in mid-air. Her tone was so sharp I nearly dropped
the plate I was drying. ‘Who has been talking to you?”

“No one,” I said hastily, “I merely used that as an
illustration. The charges the boys and girls have been
flinging at each other are more serious than that.”

“That wasn’t in Zorra,” she said excitedly. “It never
happened anyway .... that was alie.... it was alla
mistake.” Her face had gone white and her eyes
were full of fear. I covered her confusion as tactfully
as I could by talking on, and leading away from the sub-
ject. I knew I had inadvertently stirred a bitter memory
and I was sorry about it. No doubt she thought I had
deliberately evoked the past to gain my point, and in
that case I was no better than the young fighters I was
trying to reform. I couldn’t remember why I had men-
tioned a post-office scandal. There was no reason; I just
happened to use it.

One good thing came out of my unpremeditated black-
mailing; there was no more talk from her of going to
the trustees, and our football games went on.

I think it was in October, Esther’s mother brought
back the news from town that the minister had also a big
boy eighteen years old, who had stayed behind in the
East to complete his teaching term.

“So you may have your mother-in-law yet,” she said
to me, as I helped to carry her parcels into the kitchen,
“but,” she added, “he has red hair.”

“J like red hair,” I said. I hadn’t known it until that
moment, but I knew then I had always liked it.

The next day when school was over, I went to town.
I was dressed in my best dress, the dark green cloth
trimmed with military braid and brass buttons, hair
waved by the use of curling papers the night before;

WINDS OF THE WORLD 275

shoes polished (lard and lamp black), my pale complexion
toned up a little by a vigorous application of a hard
towel (afterwards I used a leaf from a cotton rose on my
hat). I had no business or errand that night. I went to
see the boy with the red hair who was working in the
drugstore. I had no excuse either, I remember. I made
no pretence of being the Victorian maiden who sits on
the shore waiting for a kindly tide to wash something up
at her feet—not at all! Having seen something on the
skyline rocking on the current, something that looked like
a treasure, I plunged boldly in and swam out for it.

The red-headed boy was in the drug store, a tall, slim,
young fellow, with clear blue eyes, regular features and
clear skin like his mother. [ bought a fountain pen,
taking quite a little while to decide, and being guided
entirely by his superior knowledge, which wasn’t too bad
for a beginning considering that I was an unsophisticated
country girl, seventeen years old, and had never heard of
“Dorothy Dix.” I paid three dollars for the pen, my last
three, and I would not receive any part of my salary for
a month. No matter, I paid over the money with a fine
air of opulence, and came home well satisfied with the
evening. But when Mrs. Hornsberg asked me about the
young man with the red hair, I had very little to say.

Two days before Christmas, we had our Concert for
which we had been practising since early Fall. There
was an organ in the school, and Esther played it very
well. So we had choruses and duets and solos. Esther
and [ sang “Whispering Hope,” and eight of my little girls
of assorted sizes sang “‘Every Little Wavelet,” with white
handkerchiefs on their heads for the white caps on the
waves; and wore blue dresses of cheese cloth dyed with
a quart of ink that had frozen in the school cupboard.
When they swayed from side to side to the rhythm, it
would be a dull person indeed, who could not see the blue
waves curling and breaking into the white foam, and
the whole wide circulation of the sea.

We were far from the sea, and these children had

276 CLEARING IN THE WEST

never seen a wave, but they did not dull the picture as
they sang:

Once I got into a boat,

Such a pretty, pretty boat,

Just as day was dawning,

And I took a little oar

And I pushed out from the shore

So very, very early in the morning.

And every little wavelet had its nightcap on,
Night cap, white cap, night cap on,

Every little wavelet had its night cap on
So very, very early in the morning.

Our last number was a dialogue, with three actors. I
was a lady traveller intent upon taking the train to Mor-
row. Charley was my boy, and we were loaded with
parcels from hat-box to a bird-cage, with a bird in it,
yellow and green made of felt, but a good bird for all that,
with large green eyes (beads loaned for the occasion by
Mrs. Jeffreys). John R. McDonald was the station agent,
and possessed of a sharp and cutting tongue. He was dis-
posed to be scornful of my many questions regarding the
train to Morrow, and could not quite make out whether
I referred to time or place.

My son, Charles, absent-mindedly consumed the lunch
reserved for the journey, while this verbal battle went
on, and just when the confusion was at its height, and
the station agent and I had almost come to blows, the
whistle of the train tore through the air of the room
(sound effect produced by willow whistles and one cow-
bell).

My son and I dashed for the door, dropping parcels
as we went; my carpet bag flew open, and linen collars,
hair brush, shoes and various garments fell out, including
a wire bustle and a red flannel chest-protector; but we
could not stay to retrieve them, and did not even look
back. When we reached the outside door, we halted and

WINDS OF THE WORLD 277

listened to the applause, which was generous, and
came back to take our bows. Then it was that Elias
Smiley stole our show from us by rising at the back and
calling out, “O, Teacher, did you get all your things!”

A boiler of coffee had been made at Mrs. McDonald’s
nearby, and when it was brought over and the thick white
cups borrowed from Huston and Betts store in town,
were passed, and two of the boys went down the aisles
with blue enamel pitchers of coffee to which the cream
and sugar had been added; and good thick ham and sal-
mon sandwiches went around; followed by layer cake,
spanish bun, marble cake and rolled jelly cake, and plates
of home-made candy, the audience settled down into
great good humor, and a truce was called on all old feuds,
past and present, and east and west of the Great Lakes.
Mrs. Jeffreys had arranged for the refreshments, and a
vote of thanks was moved to her before we parted.

It was half-past twelve before we left the school,
but what a night it had been! I couldn’t sleep for think-
ing of it. Already I was planning what we would do
next year to make the people laugh. Laughter was the
cement that would heal the breaks in this neighborhood,
laughter and something to talk of other than past sins
and sorrows.

The next day Mr. Hornsberg drove me over to Somer-
set where I caught the west freight for Wawanesa. The
passenger train came only twice a week, and the freight
was my only hope to get home for Christmas, and Mr.
Hornsberg said the conductor did not mind earrying a
passenger.

The day was dull and threatening, with a woolly in-
distinctness that blotted out the horizon. Leaden
clouds hung low, and although it was not cold, snow
was indicated by the darkening skies. The roads were
bare and hard as iron, and the seventeen-mile drive had
been a rough one. I was fortunate in not having to wait
for the freight. It came lumbering in soon after we
reached Somerset, a long freight with the caboose at the

278 CLEARING IN THE WEST

end. Mr. Hornsberg spoke to the conductor, and he was
quite willing to take me along.

I had a seat in the cupola of the caboose and enjoyed
the wide view it gave me, but the windows soon misted
over with spikes of ice as the weather grew colder.

“It looks like dirty weather,” the conductor called to
me, “but we’ll try to get you home for Christmas. Snow
is our biggest danger and may be fillin’ in the cuts now.”

He was filling up the round stove with coal; “We've
lots of this anyway,” he said, rasping his shovel into the
coal-box, “and we’ve plenty of grub, so you might be in
a worse place.”

I assured him I was very happy to be allowed to ride
on his train, and I thought it was a delightful way to
travel home for Christmas.

About three o’clock we got into the snow-storm that
was working down from the West; but the snow was dry,
and the wind which whistled past us had kept the tracks
clear. I could hear the brakeman and conductor below,
gloomily discussing the chances of getting through.

When it began to get dark, and no more could be seen
but a gray wall of whirling snow (even when I thawed
a hole in the frost on the window) I came down to where
the men were, and opened the fine box of sandwiches,
cake and candy I had brought, and these served for
dessert at our evening meal. I told them about the con-
cert, and sang “Whispering Hope” and the schools songs
for them, and did all three parts in the “Train to Mor-
row.” But the storm was worrying them, and they told
me after we left Marieapolis that they were afraid we
wouldn’t get to Wawanesa until about noon the next day.
And I might as well try to sleep. They made up a bed
for me, and the conductor brought a clean towel to cover
the pillow. So I climbed up and turned in, pretty tired
after all the excitement of the last few days, and blissfully
happy to be on my way home.

The road bed was rough and the freight ran heavily,
creaking and groaning, but I slept although a bitter wind

WINDS OF THE WORLD 279

was whistling past us, and one of the worst storms of
the season was raging. Snow sifted in through the win-
dows and sizzled on the stove below, and I heard through
my dreams the anxious words of the train men, but noth-
ing could disturb or dim the radiance that flooded my
heart. I was going home, I was re-engaged. I had
eighty dollars of my own earnings, and presents for
everybody.

At four o’clock in the morning we were stuck in the
snow and I was thrown up against the head of the berth
by the unsuccessful efforts of the engineer to buck the
crifts. The same jolt upset the stove and the red hot
coals were scattered on the floor. But the brakeman came
running in and righted the stove, and shovelled up the
coals before any harm was done, beyond a great smother
of coal smoke. Then I noticed that someone had spread a
fur coat over me, and I was glad of it in the deepening
cold of that wild Christmas morning.

We were stuck in the snow until about noon, when
the snow plow came from Brandon and released us. I
offered to cook breakfast for the men but they would not
hear of it. The brakeman, whose name was Joe, said
he was “terrible particular about his bacon, and couldn’t
trust any one to get it just right.” But they did let me
wash up the dishes for they were all working outside,
and when the train started to run, they came back to the
caboose and we all wished each other a Merry Christmas.

It was beginning to get dark when we pulled into
Wawanesa, but Jack was there to meet me and we were
soon home where the whole family had assembled for the
day. The big dinner was over, but the long table was
still set, and I was ready for a good fill of cold turkey,
mashed potatoes, turnips and apple-jelly tarts. I was
glad to see all the relatives looking so handsome in their
best clothes. I was especially thrilled with Addie, Fred
and Nellie, Will’s children, who seemed so much bigger
than when I left.

Lizzie and Tom were there too, and they were all

280 CLEARING IN THE WEST

anxious to hear about the delayed train. Mother raised
a storm of protest when she found I had ridden on a
freight, and slept in a caboose, but I stoutly defended my
kind companions, and the hospitality they had extended
tome. “Some girls could do it,’’ mother said, “but that’s
not you, Nellie. You’re not very good at keeping your
distance. No doubt you talked to these men.”

I confessed that I had. Not only talked with them
but sang, and read aloud from a book called “Lucille”,
which one of the boys was taking to his girl in Brandon.

Mother shook her head. “I wish you had more re-
serve, Nellie, you make too free with people,” she said,
“T’m afraid you’ll go too far with it some day. These
men were strangers to you.”

Tom, my brother-in-law, defended me, “You couldn’t
expect her to sit there like a bump on a log, Mrs. Mooney,”
he said, “Remember she was the guest of the train crew,
and she did the right thing; you needn’t worry about the
trainmen, they are good company for anyone. I know
the conductor, and I'll bet he enjoyed having her along.”
Will, too, added a word of approval, for which I was
grateful, and my Father said he couldn’t see that there
was any harm in singing at any time; or in a bit of pleas-
ant talk.

Our crops had been very good that fall, and that good
fortune was reflected in the Christmas presents. The
short winter days passed in a flash it seemed. But J did
get my cherished trip to Brandon, and spent most of my
eighty dollars.

I got a black cloth with a knotted stripe for an ulster,
and black persian lamb storm collar, cap and gauntlets;
and a checked “stuff” dress and brown velvet trim to it.
Later I had my photograph taken in it, and I bought my-
self a copy of “Lucille,” in while and silver binding (which
I still possess).

CHAPTER XXXIII.
RAW MATERIAL

WHEN I returned to my school I took back a set of
Dickens which Will gave me. They had been given as
a premium with the Toronto Mail and Empire, Family
Herald and some other publications. I felt immeasurably
rich in the possession of these long, paper-backed books,
tea-colored and closely printed.

I began with Martin Chuzzlewit, Charley, Esther
and J reading in turn at night. How we hated Pecksniff,
and sorrowed over Tom Pinch’s disillusionment when he
discovered the arch-treachery of the man he had trusted.
That impassioned paragraph which deseribed Tom’s
feeling as he went out disgraced, beginning: “Some-
thing without a name; compassion, sorrow, old tender-
ness, mistaken gratitude, habit, none of these, and yet
all of them” never fell on more responsive hearts than
ours. Tom Pinch, with his homely face, his awkward
gait, became to me a sign, a symbol, a token of all the un-
attractive people of the world whose virtue and goodness
and beauty are not seen by our dull eyes. I thought of
William, the Englishman, so fine, so dependable, and yet
so likely to be underestimated because he was not good
to look at. As I read and thought and marvelled, a light
shone around me. I knew in that radiance what a writer
can be at his best, an interpreter, a revealer of secrets,
a heavenly surgeon, a sculptor who can bring an angel
out of a stone.

And I wanted to write; to do for the people around me
what Dickens had done for his people. I wanted to be a
voice for the voiceless as he had been a defender of the
weak, a flaming fire that would consume the dross that
encrusts human souls, a spring of sweet water beating up

281

282 CLEARING IN THE WEST

through all this bitter world to refresh and nourish souls
that were ready to faint.

I could not tell even Charley and Esther how I felt;
I had no words to express the deep, poignant longing
that swept my soul. JI remembered the lines from Mil-
ton about fame being the spur that makes people scorn
delights and live laborious days. Yet it was not fame
that I craved. It was something infinitely greater. I
wanted to reveal humanity; to make people understand
each other; to make the commonplace things divine, and
when I sat on the flat stone on my way home from
school, I thought of these things until my head swam and
my eyes ran with tears.

The depth of my ignorance appalled me. I was bound,
fettered, gagged in ignorance. What did I know of the
world’s great literature? My words were but the ordin-
ary workworn words of everyday happenings, and I knew
nothing of life.... Moments of despair came to me when
I wished I had never read a word of Dickens. I would be
happier without this terrifying vision. Better to go on
teaching a while, stultify my soul with frivolous things,
attractive clothes and social life, settle down and marry,
and forget this shining thorny path winding up the hill.

But I knew I couldn’t do that. I must go on, even if I
went barefooted, for J had seen a bright light and caught
a glimpse of a heavenly country. I found comfort in
knowing that Dickens had only a medgre education too.
Life had taught him, and life would teach me. I had
money now (forty dollars a month) and I could buy the
books that I needed. I would hammer out my education
on the hard anvil of life. I would mine for words as
eagerly as any miner ever dug for gold. The stars in
their courses would work for me. Years afterwards when
I read Ralph Waldo Trine’s “In Tune with the Indefinite”,
I knew every word of it. It had come to me then when I
sat on the stone at the bottom or the coulee; though I had
no words to tell it, or even think it with.

I had a copy of “Sesame and Lilies” and in its pages

RAW MATERIAL 283

I found much to comfort me, and I blessed John Ruskin
because he gave me something I could get my teeth into.
I did not like his general attitude to women, or his be-
lief that they were made only to help, comfort, and in-
spire men, and that all their education must be to that
end. But in the preface to “Sesame and Lilies” he said
that girls should learn to know the life around them; and
if they had time, “should go into the families of the poor
and show them how to make the most of what they had,
coaxing them into pretty and tidy ways, and pleading for
well-folded tablecloths.”

Esther and I had laughed about that, and wondered
how we would be received if we went around our neigh-
borhood to coax the women into pretty and tidy ways.

But one day, little Mary Wheeler asked very wistfully,
when she brought her slate to my desk to have her work
corrected, ‘Please teacher, can you sew?” I told her I
could a little. ‘Would you make me a dress?” she asked.
“Mother hasn’t any time, and she’s always sick.”

I told Mary I would make her a dress, and asked her
what kind she would like.

“We have the print,” she said. “We've had it all
summer, and I will bring it to school tomorrow.”

J knew Mrs. Hornsberg would help me, and she had a
sewing machine. We made the dress, a pretty little buff
print with two pockets, pearl buttons, and an embroidered
collar, and my fame was established as a dressmaker.

Then one day Jimmy Burns brought me a note and a
pair of sharp scissors. ‘Dear Miss Mooney,” the note
said, “I wish you would cut Jimmy’s hair. He looks like
the colts do in spring, but I can’t get it done, and I guess
you won’t mind; for you have more time than I have.”

At noon I set Jimmy on my desk, tied my apron around
his neck and did the best I could to remove the winter
crop from his hard, round head. Jimmy’s sister, hover-
ing near, asked a little anxiously, “Please teacher, do you
think you could cut it curly? Pa said he just bet you
would.”

284 CLEARING IN THE WEST

As I cut Jimmy’s hair I decided I’d give his head a
long delayed washing, and put a basin of water on the
stove to heat. I kept a good supply of towels and soap,
and had a bottle of violet toilet water in my desk. So
when Johnny was well shampooed, dried, and scented, he
enjoyed a brief bright hour of popularity, for all the chil-
dren wanted to smell his head. There was a run on hair-
cutting after that, and Charley had to turn in and do
some of it.

Having made a dress for Mary Wheeler, we went on
and made shirts for the little boys, and night dresses for
Mrs. Wheeler. The annual baby was about to arrive.
Poor Mrs. Wheeler, thin, hollow-eyed, with blue veins in
her thin hands, and misery in her eyes, had too much
trouble. The Wheelers lived on a rented farm, and John
Wheeler was the neighborhood drunkard; that is, the
most spectacular one; the one who drank out of season.
Even in harvest time, with the grain shelling in the field,
Johnny Wheeler could not refrain. I found that the
people of this neighborhood drew a sharp line between
summer and winter drinkers.

I had been over many times, and Mrs. Wheeler talked
freely to me. ‘I know I shouldn’t have married John,”
she said one Saturday when I had gone over to help her
whitewash the house. We had pushed everything into
the middle of the floor, and she sat in a rocker on the
edge of the amassment, attending to the last year’s baby.
I stood on a chair that had lost its back and put the
whitewash on the wall with a wide brush. “There was a
fine man wanted me, and life would have been different
with him for he was steady and thrifty, but he was the
most homely man I had ever seen, and I wanted some-
thing to look at!”

I had heard that before. I had said that when Han-
nah put “moral worthiness’ at the head of her list of
qualifications for a husband. I remember the argument
we had over it. I had stuck out for a fine face and car-
riage as qualification number one. Mrs. Wheeler

RAW MATERIAL 285

rambled on, “Johnny Wheeler was the sort of man who
would take any girl’s eye. My! I wish you could have
seen him then!”

She spoke in a monotone, her voice as colorless as her
face, and as limp as a washed ribbon. It came to me
now, punctuated by the loud slaps of the whitewash
brush.

“You do not see him to any advantage now. He has
grown careless and discouraged, what with the hail and
the frost, so many children, and I have been sick a lot one
way and another. Life is not what we hoped it would
be, and it is hard on a man like Johnny. And he’s a lot
better than plenty of the men around here for he very
seldom swears before the children, and you might say
he never comes home drunk. He stays away and sleeps
it off some place and then comes home with a shave and
a hair-cut and a pleasant word for everybody. That’s
one thing about Johnny—he’s always pleasant.”

I did not see Mrs. Wheeler again until after the baby
was born, and then she told me the story of Johnny’s
lapse from virtue at the time the baby came. “I never
thought he’d the worse at a time like this,” she said, as
she sat rocking the baby in the broken rocking chair,
“and mind you, I am not blamin’ him altogether. You
see he thought I would be slower than I was, and he only
intended to take one drink. But one led to another, and
he said himself he took the first one just because he was
feelin’ so anxious about me, and he felt the need of a
little bracin’ up. He’s very sympathetic, is Johnny, and
can’t bear to see anyone suffer. Well, anyway, he and
the doctor had a bottle and I guess they were both feel-
ing pretty light in the head when they left town, and as
the afternoon went on and there was no sign of them on
the road, Mrs. Drummond who was with me was so fright-
ened I was sorry for her, and kept sayin’ Johnny would
come, I was sure he would.

But just when I was at the worst of my pains the
minister’s wife came in, not knowing anything was wrong,

286 CLEARING IN THE WEST

just came to see me, and she just took one look at me
and peeled off her cuffs, rolled up her sleeves, and I’m
tellin’ you she was as good as any doctor, and it was all
over when Johnny and the doctor came. Fancy her
knowin’ what to do. I always thought from what I had
heard of her that she was more of a lady !”

“Wasn’t it fine of her!” I exclaimed, “and what a for-
tunate thing for you that she happened to come at that
time. What did Mr. Wheeler say!’

“Johnny felt terrible,” she said, “after he wakened up.
He lay down and slept as soon as he got in, and didn’t
realize that the baby was born for hours. He’s awful
fond of the children, you know, and thinks this little fel-
low is the best one yet. I suppose you think I should
be pretty mad at Johnny,” she went on, reading my face,
“and maybe I should. Everyone says I’m too easy on
him, but I'll tell you how that comes. My father was the
exact opposite of Johnny. He worked hard, paid his debts,
provided for my mother, and all of us, but never gave us
a civil word; looked like a thundercloud all day long;
never joked or even talked to us; and I was afraid of him

and near-about hated him. ... I was always afraid to
come home. ... I knew I was in for it.... Now. It’s all
different. ... Johnny is always pleasant. Careless, easy

going, but pleasant—and a woman will stand a lot from
a man if he’s pleasant. Now I know there are men who
are both good and pleasant, but they’re scarce. Maybe
you'll get one. I hope you will, but get a pleasant one
anyway, I say.”

I pondered on what I had heard as I walked home
across the fields.

Shortly after the Wheeler episode I went to the little
town to spend a Saturday afternoon with a fellow teacher,
and before the afternoon ended we went to a quilting bee
at one of the big houses where I remember the wallpaper
was red with green and silver dragons. There was a
table in the hall with a rope cover fringed out at the cor-
ners like a yellow horse’s tail, and on the table was a

RAW MATERIAL 287

stuffed owl with yellow bead eyes. The quilt was being
quilted by perhaps a dozen women and was going to be
sent to the Manse for a Christmas present.

Soon after our arrival, one of the women gave out the
news that the Methodist minister’s wife and another
woman were going around with a petition asking that
women be allowed to vote, and a general discussion arose
and surged and swelled above the quilt. I gathered
that the ladies were opposed to the movement, and were
bitterly scornful of the minister’s wife and her friend for
sponsoring it. One of the ladies, whom I knew after-
wards (she was the wife of the town drunkard), said:
“It’s an’ insult to our husbands to even ask for the vote.”

I wanted to speak; I wanted my friend the teacher to
put them right. I knew it must be right if the minister’s
wife believed in it, it must be right. To my amazement,
my friend was scornful, and just as the conversation be-
came embarrassingly personal, a cry arose that the ladies
were coming, and a knock sounded on the door. At once
the quilters took flight upstairs, even my friend fled with
the rest, and the hostess and I were left.

The ladies explained their errand, while the hostess
sat stonily uninterested on the edge of her chair, and the
house pulsed with strange rustlings.

“We thought we would meet with your guests, Mrs.
Brown,” the minister’s wife said in her sweet way, “but
it seems they have gone,” at which the house seemed to
fairly crackle with suppressed emotions.

I signed the petition, mine being the second name.
The hostess repeated over and over, “I do not think I
care to,” and the ladies went on their way.

It was an embarrassing moment when the quilters
came back, shrill with excitement and stormed at the
petitioners, and I had to declare my allegiance to the
Cause. My friend was ashamed of meI know. She felt
she had harbored an anarchist.

I wanted to tell them about the minister’s wife, how
she had come into the Wheeler house and taken charge,

288 CLEARING IN THE WEST

and brought the poor woman through when the doctor
and husband had failed. I wanted to tell them that they
should have stayed and listened to her for she was a
wonderful woman.

I knew these were good women, church women, were
they not quilting for the manse? I was surprised to see
how bitter they were.

I knew that women should help each other, and I
could see that the vote would bring an added importance
to women, but I could not put it in words. They had
me down.

So I came away and as I walked home the three miles,
I pondered with deep agitation on the world-old problem
of ‘Why are women so mean to each other?” I was glad
I had signed the petition. I would gladly sign anything
the minister’s wife asked me to sign, and a fine frenzy of
high endeavor came to me whenever I thought of her.
I wanted to be like her with her quiet dignity and her well-
cut clothes. There was not a woman in that room who
could touch her in appearance, and how they did attack
her and her friend for “interfering Methodists”. That
was the terrible thing about the whole experience. How
could these Christian women be so mean? I knew vaguely
that it was because there was a crowd of them. Anyone
of them would have stayed and listened and at least have
been polite. This was my first experience with the mind
of a mob.

There was a temperance chart in the school which
some clever salesman had sold the trustees for forty dol-
lars. It folded up into a coffin-like box and stood upright
in the little cupboard behind my desk.

As the result of a temperance lesson in Sunday School
I began to study the handbook of lessons which accom-
panied the chart; and when a rainy day kept the child-
ren in at noon, I brought out the chart and taught them
from it the effect of alcohol on the human system. The
colors were bright and lurid, and I think the pictures of
inflamed membrane and hob-nailed livers fascinated

RAW MATERIAL 289

them. Anyway they liked to see the pictures, and I
bought a bottle of alcohol for the experiments, and we
showed them how alcohol eats up water, thereby rend-
ering the blood unfit for its work of cleansing, we knew
why a drunkard has a red nose, and why he loses his
power of articulation. All went well until one day my
new pupil, Robert John Ricker, challenged the whole
theory in a few memorable words—but I must go back
and introduce Robert John.

I was putting work on the board one day about a
month before, when suddenly the busy hum of the school-
room ceased. I turned quickly to see what had hap-
pened. Everyone was staring at the door.

On the doorstep stood a little boy of eight, with just
the rim of a straw hat on his head; hair as yellow as fresh
wheat stubble, dark beautiful eyes, cheerful freckles over
his nose, and a new tin dinner pail in his hand.

“Hello kids,” he called bravely, though I could see he
was a little frightened. I brought him over to my desk,
and found out his name and age, and learned that he had
not been to school, and was not sure whether he was
going to stay now.

“T’'ll come to-day, anyway,” he told me quite honestly,
“Pa said, ‘Go on and give the damthing a whirl.’ ”’

I could see that Robert John thought that “dam-
thing’ was one word. Robert John was the unspoiled
child of nature. His parents were of German descent,
had lived in the Middle West States, and had sold out
there to come to Manitoba and homesteaded years before.
There were three brothers of them, all with families, and
the old grandfather, who was still the head of the clan.
Robert John had never been to town, or to a picnic, or
any gathering. Not one of the connection had ever been
to church. Robert John swore as innocently as a bird
sang; it was merely a form of expression.

He stayed that day, and I was careful to see that it
was made pleasant for him. I allowed his profanity to
pass unchecked, for I knew that one breath of criticism

290 CLEARING IN THE WEST

would blow him away. I gave him a new scribbler, and a
bright red pencil, let him clean the boards, and began a
story at four o’clock, promising to finish it the next morn-
ing.

He came back the next day, and I knew I had enlisted
him. When he came to say goodnight to me, at four
o'clock, waiting until the children were gone, and looking
down at his feet, he said:

“If you like, Teacher, you can kiss me now.” I
looked at his downcast little face, and I knew there was
something back of his words.

“Thank you,” I said gravely, “but if I were to kiss
you every night, I’d have to do it to all the others, and
that would be quite a chore.”

He looked up. A smile of relief lightened his cher-
ubic face. Then a mighty oath broke from him, ‘Hell,
wait till I get home. Pa said I’d have to kiss you night
and mornin’. That’s what kept me seared, the old nd

I wish I could record here that I was able to bring
Robert John into the pleasant land of unsullied speech,
but I can only say that he did try to lower the content of
his profanity, but even that was a hard struggle.

“Hell, Teacher!” he said, when I approached the
subject, “how can a word be bad? It’s nothing. It’s
just a sound. It breaks no bones.” One day when we
were again in conference, he asked me, “What do you
say when you’re mad?”

The first day that Robert John saw the temperance
chart and heard the lesson, he sat in front of me and
listened intently. His face when I was teaching any
class was a delight, in its expression of close concentra-
tion. But on this day, as I went on to show the effect
of alcohol on the lining of the stomach, I could see he
was growing rather restless, and I knew an interruption
was coming. When the lesson was over, he stood up to
speak.

“Teacher, did you make the pictures?”

“No,” I answered, “these pictures were made in a big

RAW MATERIAL 291

city by doctors who have studied these things for years.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you what they are—they’re all
lies. My father says a drink of licker is better than
a meal; and he has been drinkin’ since he was ten, and
he was never sick in his life. Now, Teacher!”

The other children looked at the young heckler in
horror.

For a moment I was nonplussed.

“There are some people, Robert,” I said cautionsly,
“who seem to be able to do anything. I knew a man who
declared he had never had a bath, and he was
healthy, and strong; and I knew a family who never
opened a window in their house, and they did not have
any more colds than other people who did open their
windows. I knew a little boy who could run through the
snow in his bare feet, and he seemed none the worse.
But one case does not prove anything. Anyway, your
father is a young man yet; it is too soon to say that
drinking does not hurt him.”

This note of rebellion was well discussed in the neigh-
borhood. The trustees who had paid the forty dollars
under the spell of the good salesman, were resentful of
his attack, and thought I should have rebuked him more
severely. Some who were not trustees, took sides with
Robert John.

Echoes of the conversations came to school, and the
neighborhood seemed about evenly divided. I could see
there was only one way to settling the matter. So, with
the consent of the trustees, and Mrs. Jeffreys, who agreed
to solicit refreshments, we had a public meeting one Sun-
day afternoon and everybody came. I showed the chart,
and with the pupils help conducted the experiments.

Everything went off well and the audience listened
closely. The crowning glory of the occasion was that
Robert John’s father came and made a speech when the
lessons were over; a strange speech at a temperance
meeting, but effective, too.

Putting his chew of tobacco in one cheek, “I guess I

292 CLEARING IN THE WEST

started this, folks,” he said, opening the window behind
him and spitting at the woodpile, “by tellin’ my kid that
licker is better than grub for a man; and he shot it on
the Teacher, and pretty soon everyone had a go at it.
Well, I ain’t sayin’ I’m through, because I don’t know, but
I do say, a fellow is a damsight better without licker,
and I think these pictures are —-———., good stuff, for
kids to see.”

I went home that night, walking on air. Right had
triumphed. The victory was ours. I thought every man
in the neighborhood was delivered, sobered and safe. The
demon, Rum, had been exercised, and cast out. There
would be no more Saturday night sprees now that the
real scientific facts were known.

But, the next Saturday night, through the quiet star-
light, we were awakened by the thundering of horses
galloping over the frozen ground, urged on by their
tipsy riders, their voices just as raucous as before,—
and a great disappointment was mine.

I lay awake a long time that night.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE YOUNG EVANGELISTS

ONE morning at church we heard an announcement that
stirred us deeply. We were going to have a season of
revival, and the evangelists were two young women, Miss
Nettie and Miss Maud Judd from Ontario. They were
coming fully authorized by the church, and would prob-
ably stay a month, holding meetings for five nights in
the week. And the time was set after seeding when the
farmers would be able to attend.

These young women’s labors in other fields, the min-
ister said, had been blessed by God; brands had been
plucked from the burning, and many young lives turned
into the paths of righteousness before the enemy had
time to sow the tares. And we were asked to pray
earnestly that great good might come to us all.

Charley, Esther and I talked of it on the way home.
We had seen a picture of the Judd sisters in the Christian
Guardian, and thought they were beautiful. Mr. Horns-
berg was opposed to the whole idea of women preachers.
He said a man would have no chance. If the girls said
“Come to the altar and we’ll pray for you,” it would be
only common politeness to go. No, no, he wanted no
pretty girls mixed up in his religion. He warned us there
would be trouble in families, and he would not go near
them.

Of course we knew he would. No one could hold him
back. He had never missed a thing in his life.

I knew a little about women preachers. Mrs. Andrew
Gordon had preached at Wawanesa and Treesbank, in her
clear ringing voice, reasoning with us, patiently, as a
mother with her erring children.

Mrs. Roy of St. George’s Church in Winnipeg taught

293

294 CLEARING IN THE WEST

a young ladies’ Bible Class which I attended there, and I
had loved to listen to her kindly messages.

I had read Adam Bede, and had been moved to my
heart’s core by the preaching of Dinah Snow. I had spent
a whole afternoon in Mrs. McGregor’s Boarding-house at
Swan Lake, just a few weeks before, waiting for the mail
man, Johnny Moorehouse, to pick me up and give me a
ride to Manitou. The rain, which fell in torrents, delayed
him, but what did I care? I had Adam Bede, and my
house was thatched. The afternoon wore into evening
and still the rain stroked the windows with its wet fingers,
and I read on.

I sorrowed with poor Hetty Sorrell, and scorned the
young squire who had brought such trouble to her, and
laughed at Mrs. Poyser, but more than all these, I
preached the gospel with Dinah Snow, up and down the
lanes and greens of England. Dinah Snow! the name
fascinated me, with its combination of black and white,
passion and purity. Now we were going to hear two
women preachers, young and beautiful like Dinah Snow.

They did not disappoint me. Nettie, the elder sister,
had a face like a cameo, delicate, sweet and martyrlike,
and eyes that burned with a blue flame. She pleaded
and she preached. I know she saw us all drifting toward
the precipice, and she tried to snatch us in her little
hands as we passed.

Maud, who was just eighteen, was more of this earth,
and therefore, more attractive to the younger genera-
tion. Her eyes were very dark brown, mistily purple
like a pansy, and her hair, of the same shade, curled back
from her face. She smiled too, when she talked, and
her voice was a rich contralto. Maud’s feet were firmly
set on the common earth, and her appeal to us was not
so much to save ourselves from destruction, as to come
into harmony with God, because that was a good and
pleasant thing to do.

When the Judd sisters sang, J thought the angels in
heaven surely gathered around to listen. Nettie’s sop-

THE YOUNG EVANGELISTS 295

rano voice, sweet and thin as a flute, ran up into the raf-
ters of the church, and Maud’s rolling contralto swept on
like an organ. I can hear them as I write:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me,

See on the portals he’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.

Come home! Come home!

Ye that are weary come home.

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling, oh sinners, come home.

They preached and sang, and had altar calls, and
after-meetings; and Maud conducted the congregational
singing and set the men singing alone; then the women;
then the right side, then the left side, and managed to
loosen every voice, and give us all a feeling that we had
taken part.

Their greatest appeal was to the young men. The
young evangelists were beautiful, vital, and just a little
too well-dressed to escape the jealousy of the women.
They were so trim, neat, immaculate in their tailored
clothes. Maud had a reddish brown rough tweed, made
with a little ripple around the basque, and trimmed with
a fringed ruching on the neck and the sleeves, that was
so lovely that it made it hard for me to be “in the
spirit” when I looked at her.

The druggist, a big fellow who sang in the choir, was
their first notable conquest, and he came down from the
choir-loft one night, and in his testimony announced he
was going to live for the glory of God, hereafter; and
would burn all the pipes and tobacco in his store the next
day. This started a chorus of “Amens” and “Hallelu-
jahs.”

Mr. Hornsberg leaned over and said to me in a loud
whisper, “You’ve lost your beau! Miss Mooney, the
preacher girls have cut you out!”

296 CLEARING IN THE WEST

The druggist had come out on two occasions and taken
me driving with a livery team; I did not know how to
refuse when he came, and besides a drive was pleasant on
a quiet Sunday afternoon. I wasn’t worrying about him,
the girls could have him. But when I went to town one
evening after school intending to stay for the meeting,
and passed Maud walking with the boy from the drug
store, so deeply engrossed in each other, they did not even
see me, I got a distinctly unpleasant feeling. Of course
I knew their conversation was on a highly spiritual plane,
but even so, she did not need to look up into his face so
often; and I knew how shattering those purplish eyes
could be.

I felt very awkward all at once, and a bit shabby and
gawky, and very much a country girl. What chance had
I against these dangerous eyes with the purple depths,

and those well-cut clothes.... ?
Not that I cared, I told myself, loftily. It was noth-
ing to me...I was never going to marry anyway. I

did not go to the drug store as I had intended. I went to
W. D. Ruttan’s store, and bought a new coat and hat, in-
tending to wear them to the meeting, but changed my
mind about that, too, and went home.

I had my own horse then, a sorrel-saddle horse, which
I had bought from the mail-carrier, Johnny Moorehouse.
I was never so glad to have a horse of my own as I was
that night. Some way the independence I felt in this
possession did much to restore me. If I had had to walk
home that night, I might have mired down in a bog of
self-pity.

As I rode home slowly, I reasoned with myself. It
was all for the best. I must avoid all complications. I
had work to do. I was going to write, I must travel
alone—always alone. I told myself everything but the
truth, which was that I was bitterly jealous of the dark-
eyed, charming Maude.

The revival began with the burning of the pipes.
Crowds came to the church every night, and dozens

THE YOUNG EVANGELISTS 297
came to the altar. Every Sunday morning people joined
the church, prayer-meetings were held in the afternoons;
even the country people were moved. I went back to the
meetings in a few days. I knew a great work was being
done. I wanted to help; I had a high exalted feeling now,
of bearing my cross, and a much less exalted, but infinitely
happier feeling that Maud would soon be on her way, and
life would settle back into its pleasant ways.

The conservative element, Presbyterians and Angli-
cans, kept away from the meetings, and were outspoken
in their disapproval. They warned the people to stay
away. They foresaw disaster in the excitement of the
altar calls and conversions. They recounted cases of in-
sanity that they had known of, and these criticisms were
answered by Nettie, in her gentle words, “We do well to
be excited,” she said, “over the greatest thing in life.
Religion is greater than a horse-race, or a football game,
or an election .... Excitement and emotions which have
no outlet are dangerous, I know, but religion gives an
outlet. Christ said, ‘Feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
preach the gospel to the poor.’ Have you any hungry, or
naked, or poor, or erring, or discouraged, or lonely, or
sad, among you? If so, then don’t worry about an outlet
for your emotion, pour out your new-found love on these.
Cry if you wish, over your sins! There is no water so
holy as the tear of a penitent sinner.”

In spite of all opposition the meetings grew in num-
bers and interest, and the whole neighborhood was
shaken. Family quarrels were made up, old debts paid,
drunkards reformed. Churches were crowded, bar-rooms
emptied. We saw these miracles. I knew then why the
temperance chart had failed. It had shown certain facts,
as true as the multiplication tables, and given warnings;
but it had been powerless to supply the will-power to heed
these warnings. It showed the right way, but had no
power to make people choose the right way. It
appealed to the head alone, and because of this it failed.

298 CLEARING IN THE WEST

This, then, was the secret of religion. It gave strength
to the weak, life to the dead; it made people want to do
the right thing.

We started a Sunday School at our school, and old and
young came. The Saturday night rides were over; and a
new spirit came to our neighborhood.

TI have spoken of the wife of the town drunkard, who
did not want to vote because that wish would reflect on
her husband. She, of course, being the saint of our com-
munity, attended the meetings, and early in them asked
for the prayers of God’s people for her husband. I was
there the night she stood up and made this plea. A tall,
pale husk of a woman, whose shabby clothes hung on her
as they would on a clothes horse. I felt for her a sort of
pity, that was mixed with contempt. She was such a
door-mat; she even washed for the hotel-keeper’s wife,
to pay old Silas’ liquor bills. And, needless to say, I lost
no time in praying for Silas. I mean I did not pray for
him; but Silas did very well without my prayers.

One night Silas was converted with all the emotion that
went with a prodigal son’s return. He was a fine looking
man, and being something of a show-man, missed none of
the fireworks. He confessed he had been a lazy bum,
letting his wife support him—and she had been a long-
suffering angel; and he said he was through with liquor
forever; “so help him God.”

I do not think many believed him, they knew him too
well, or thought they did. But we can take the long view
of Silas Brand’s case now, for that was forty years ago,
and all the returns are in; the books are closed and noth
ing can hurt his record now. He went to work the day
after his conversion, in a lumber yard. He was received
in the church the next Sunday morning on confession of
faith. He became a new man; with a new countenance,
and one of that district’s best loved citizens.

Not long ago, one of his sons whom I had taught, sent
me a paper in which his father’s death was recorded, and

THE YOUNG EVANGELISTS 299

in the obituary, written by the United Church minister of
the little town, were these words:

“He was soundly converted many years ago, in revival
meetings conducted by the Misses Judd, in Manitou, and
his zeal for the work of God knew no languor. His mem-
ory in this neighborhood will ever be a happy one.”

The conversions did not all last. All the grains, even
of wheat, that most enduring and vital of seeds, do not
grow.

Before the end of the month it became evident that
Nettie Judd would have to take a rest. She was growing
paler and thinner before our eyes; a cough often shook
her frail little body. The minister’s wife said Nettie did
not take care of herself; did not wear warm clothing;
did not sleep enough, did not seem to care whether she
lived or died, belonged too much to the other world.

The girls went from Manitou to Pilot Mound and
Crystal City, and conducted meetings with the same spec-
tacular results. Then suddenly the flickering torch was
blown out. Nettie died.

She was only twenty-six years old. It was not a long
life, as we reckon time. But she influenced many. She
burned the candle at both ends, but it certainly made a
bright and beautiful light while it lasted, and lighted
many a stumbling soul into the way of life everlasting.

Maud went back to Ontario with the little coffin. I
remember how she looked standing on the back platform
of the train, as it wound up the grade, dressed in a rough
gray coat with capes, a little red cap on her curls, waving
to us, a long good-bye.

We stood there, a sad little group, awed by the pres-
ence of death, and yet exalted too. We knew the Heavenly
Portals had opened wide when Nettie went in, and it
seemed that some of the glory was shining around us as
we lingered. A spring snow was falling in big flakes,
and the train was rapidly fading into the gray distance as
it pulled up the grade past Luke Armstrong’s. We
watched it still, and did not move until it had gone from

300 CLEARING IN THE WEST

sight. Then, without speaking, we turned and crossed
the tracks to go back.

I turned at the Ellis’ house corner to go up Front
Street, to Curistons’ Livery Stable, where I had left my
horse. I felt a gentle pressure on my arm, and you would
never guess who was walking with me! YL

CHAPTER XXXV.
I Saw E. Cora HIND

Miss HIND’s visit to Manitou came during my second
year in Hazel School.

The Manitou Mercury carried a news item which
caused me to press my green dress, blacken my shoes, and
iron out my black veil with the green dots.

“Miss E. Cora Hind of Winnipeg will arrive on Satur-
day’s train to visit her friend, Mrs. W. D. Ruttan.”

I knew about Miss Hind. She had been the first lady
typist in Winnipeg, having come there as a very young
girl from Flesherton, Ontario; and now she was on the
staff of the Free Press. She wrote signed articles, inter-
views, spoke in public and I had seen her picture and
knew she was a striking figure of a woman, well-dressed,
and impressive.

I would see Miss Hind, maybe I would get a chance
to speak to her for I knew Mrs. Ruttan. I would go to
the station on Saturday. There were always many people
at the station, for the trains crossed in Manitou, and that
hour between twelve and one was the peak of the village
life.

When I arrived at Curiston’s Livery stable and put
my horse away, I found I had plenty of time; the trains
would not come for half an hour, but people were going
down the sidewalk past John Woottons’ store on one
corner and the Ellis House on the other.

It was rather too bad that the trains came together.
No one could watch both trains arriving; the East train
from Winnipeg slipping easily down the grade, almost
noiselessly, with its smoke blown back on its shoulders by
the prevailing west wind; and the other bound for Winni-
peg with its smoke standing high over the engine, labor-
ing up the track. But it gave us a feeling that great
events were breaking at our feet when the two great

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messengers of commerce stood for four minutes heavily
breathing as they disgorged passengers, express parcels
and mail. And how busy and important the station agent
and his assistant were handing out orders to both con-
ductors, while we could hear the telegraph instruments
left alone in the office still talking to themselves in sud-
den rushes of clattering sounds.

Everyone who could, came to the station on that Sat-
urday morning, even Mrs. Barnes from the section house
came over with her apron turned behind her to show that
though she came from her work and would return to her
work, for the moment she had left all menial tasks behind
her. The butcher, knowing that business paused for the
trains to pass, came hastily down the sidewalk, bare-
headed, with his suit coat on over his once-white apron;
a farmer’s boy drove rapidly down the street with his foot
hanging out of the buckboard just to show that he was
socially at ease and that coming to town was an old story
to him; tied his horse in front of Duncan Gunn’s store
and came jauntily over the tracks with his hat on one
side of his head.

Soon we saw the smoke of the East train. She was
coming! Miss Hind, I mean. In a minute or two I
would see her. Mrs. Ruttan was talking to a group of
women, and I had not been able to catch a word with her.
In my wildest dreams I had believed it possible she might
ask me to come to see Miss Hind. I remembered that
Mrs. Ruttan had once said that I should be in the choir,
for she thought I had a good contralto voice.
I wondered if I dared go over and speak to her now. The
crowd gathered and swarmed across the platform.

I heard one woman say, “If the west train is late I
declare I won’t wait. Yesterday it was so late my pota-
toes got burned. I gave them plenty of water to-day but
Tom likes them cooked with a bone in them... . 1 do wish
the C.P.R. would give us a decent train time.” The train
came sliding in noiselessly and the passenger coach stop-
ped in front of me. My chance of speaking to Mrs.
Ruttan was gone now but at least I would see Miss Hind.

I SAW E. CORA HIND . 303

There she was. No mistake, a young woman in a tan
tweed suit with brown facings; a little hat to match with
a saucy quill set at exactly the right angle; and a scarf
with flaring ends. She looked over the heads of the
people who were descending the steps, picked out Mrs.
Ruttan and waved to her. Her face had a fresh and
lovely color and her fine dark blue eyes beamed with
health and friendliness—a break in the crowd gave me
a full view of her as she stepped briskly down the steps,
with her small square leather bag in her hand. Then it
was I saw her little feet so trimly shod in russet leather
shoes. I had never seen prettier shoes. The crowd
drew back making an aisle for her, closing in behind as
she passed.

I wanted to follow her. I wanted Mrs. Ruttan to
speak to me. But a sudden shyness had fallen on me,
the shyness of the country girl. I think it was those
twinkling russet shoes of hers. Mine were black goat
skin, pebbled and a little bit dull; also buttoned and
gaping a bit at the top—I should have moved the top
buttons over but had never thought of it. I could not
make a move, and quite miserably I watched Mrs. Ruttan
and her guest crossing the track; Mrs. Ruttan insisting
against Miss Hind’s protest on carrying the little square
brown bag. I heard her say she had checked her big
valise. Tommy Coolidge, the drayman, would deliver it.
I saw Mrs. Ruttan give him the check and I thought
with longing of the treasures of attire it would hold. I
watched them until they went in Mr. Ruttan’s store.

I had seen her! I had seen what a newspaper woman
could be at her shining best. Like the sad little girl of
whom Katherine Mansfield wrote in the Doll’s Playhouse,
I could say, “I seen the lamp.”

Before I went back to my boarding house I went to
the post office and wrote to the Richardson Book Store in
Winnipeg for a book on shorthand believing as so many
people did then, that this was the key to success in news-
paper work.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
My First POLITICAL MEETING

WHEN I recall how little we knew or cared about public
matters I cannot be critical of the young people of to-day.

I attended one political meeting in Manitou about this
time and would not have been there but for the persuasion
of Mrs. Brown, whom I met in Huston’s store. Mrs.
Brown, who was a widow, lived about four miles out of
town and had come in to do her Saturday shopping, had
heard of the meeting and decided to stay for it. She asked
me to do the same and offered to drive me back to my
boarding house when it was over. I had my own horse
then and so could get home myself but her offer to drive
me out impressed me, I wondered why she was so anxious
to have me attend the meeting.

I knew about Mrs. Brown. The women admired her,
but the men I had heard speak of her were critical of her
and resented her independent ways. She was a tall,
angular woman with a weather beaten face, criss-crossed
with tiny lines, blue eyes and a pleasant crisp voice.

“The women here are asleep,” she said to me, as we
walked about waiting for eight o’clock. “Being all right
‘ themselves they care little for other women. The com-
fortably married woman is the most selfish person in the
world. I’ve asked dozens of them to come with me to
this meeting, I asked everyone I saw after I heard of it.
You’d laugh to hear the excuses. They had to give Billy
a bath, or they had to blacken the family boots, or their
husbands wouldn’t like it. They are afraid to make an
independent move. Then I saw you and I had a sudden
gleam of hope. I had heard something about you that
sounded original. Is it true that you have two boys at
your school who were always fighting, and you got tired

804

MY FIRST POLITICAL MEETING 305
of it and made them fight it out one day, to get the matter
settled?”

I admitted it, but hastened to explain it was not so
bad as it sounded. There had been nothing more serious
than nose-bleeds apiece, and one black-eye; and peace had
settled down on the playground since and the boys were
good friends.

“Well, I liked that,” said Mrs. Brown. “It revealed an
original caste of mind. And I’m glad you will come with
me. I’ve tried very hard to rouse women and failed.
Maybe I can get you interested and you’ll do something.
Who knows? Anyway I am going to risk the price of a
dinner on you.”

I protested that, but she insisted, and at a boarding
house on the front street, facing the tracks, we ate at a
little oilcloth covered table, in a dark corner; and Mrs.
Brown explained to me why she wanted women to vote
and be members of school boards and go to Parliament,
and take their place in the community.

“I knew nothing of business until my husband died,”
she said in her even voice, “I was a nice girl equipped for
life, my poor mother thought. I could bake, sew, play
the organ, and recite the ‘Evening Hymn,’ and had made
quilts, and a seed-wreath. But what good does that do
me now, when I am the head of a house with five little
children depending on me? I have to do a man’s work,
as well as a woman’s, and in doing that I have found

out a few things. Men are afraid of women, jealous of se

them, and unfair to them. They want women to be look-
ing-glasses, howbeit false ones that make them look big-,
ger than they are. Even my little boys want me to watch!
them when they are sleigh-riding down the hill.
“Especially strong in most men is their dislike of
women, who know more than they do. I taught a hired
man a new wrinkle about ploughing and he left me, he
said he wasn’t going to be bossed by a woman, and the
neighbors thought he did exactly the right thing .
They would do more for me if I were a helpless, pretty,

306 CLEARING IN THE WEST

little thing who would burst into tears ....I cried plenty
the first year I was left alone, and everyone was very

kind to me then. Now, that I am really trying to run my
' farm and look after my family I mzet plenty of opposi-
tion... . But I can’t keep on crying, even to get help.
How I hate that song, ‘Men must work and women must
weep.’ I can work like a man, I can plough, and run a
binder .... and believe me, my girls will get a man’s
education. They won’t be left helplessly floundering like
Iwas....

“We have to get the vote on account of the laws. In
Ontario a woman has some claim on her husband’s prop-
erty, but none here. That was changed because of Indian
wives. The poor Indian women were cut off from any
claim on a man’s property. They said they had to do
away with the wife’s claim too, on account of the boom
in 1882 when property was changing hands so fast. But
it won’t be set right until women vote. You’ll see.

“It’s a man-made world, young lady, as you will find.
Even nature works against women, by making them
smaller and weaker, giving them all the human ailments,
and a few of their own; and society has taken up the
good work by laying heavier obligations on women and a
higher standard of morality.”

“But there are compensations,” I protested. ‘Women
lead a more sheltered life... .”

“Yes, on paper,” she said sadly. “I did not know what
life could do to a woman until I was left. I had a good
home, and a good husband. But homes pass and hus-
bands die .... Well, I shouldn’t be so mournful with you
and so discouraging. I am not so badly off as some. I
would rather have a good husband dead than a bad one
living! Iam grateful for all my blessings, good children,
and good health.”

We went to the meeting in the Town Hall, where the
Hon. Thomas Greenway was speaking. He commented
on our appearance and said he was glad to see at least
‘ two women in the audience. Politics concerned women

MY FIRST POLITICAL MEETING 307

as much as men, though he did not think women would
ever need to actually take part in politics, But their in-
fluence was needed and never more so than at this time.
It was the women’s place to see that their men folk voted
and voted right and this he said (so even we could under-
stand), meant voting Liberal; which brought applause
from the audience.

Mrs. Brown and I had written out two questions and
signed them as we sat at the oilcloth covered table in the
boarding house.

(1) Are you in favor of extending the Franchise to .
women? If so when may we expect to have this privi-
lege?

(2) Are you in favor of women having homesteading
rights, and if so, will you ask the Dominion Government
to consider this?

There was a collection taken to defray expenses and
we put our questions on the plate along with our contri-
butions. We saw the chairman read the questions and
show them to Mr. Greenway, who laughed good-naturedly
when he read them and looked down at us with a sort of
fatherly rebuke in his eyes! He was a fine figure of a
man with a full, brown beard, a well-shaped head, and a
merry smile. Then there were more whispers, the other
speaker was consulted and he took the questions, read
them, and shook his head. Then the chairman put the
paper in his pocket, from which it was never recovered
and we were sorry then that we had given our two quar-
ters.

We stayed and listened, not greatly interested in what
was said. The other party, it seemed, had well nigh
ruined the country. It had been put out just in the nick
of time. Another term would have been fatal. They
must be kept out!

The meeting closed with feeble cheers for the Premier
and I think everyone was glad when it was over.

Mrs. Brown and I were not spoken to, though I saw

308 CLEARING IN THE WEST

men whom I knew, and she, no doubt, knew many. But
they charitably ignored us.

We parted at the livery stable, where she too had left
her horse. We were indignant at our chilly reception
but undismayed and full of plans for further advances.

»But when I got away from Mrs. Brown my enthusiasm
for political life began to wane. It was a sordid, grubby
business, judging by this dull meeting with its stale air,
and I was uncomfortable all the time I sat in it, knowing
we were not wanted.

I rode home through the dark night wondering about
what I had heard. The sorrel horse knew his way, with-
out any guidance .... Many of the houses were in dark-
ness, for country people go to their beds early even on
Saturday night. As I passed Ben Cook’s house I heard
the mournful notes of a fiddle. Ben and Henry his
brother lived at the turn of the road in a little square
unpainted house, and did their own cooking .... I had
skated with them on the lake near their farm the fall
before, when we took advantage of the ice before the snow
came, and gathered at the lake on the moonlight nights,
making fires of driftwood on the shore. I could hear the
violin notes long after I passea—they followed me down
the dark trail. Ben had been one of the converts at the
Judd revival and he played and sang one of the revival
hymns now:

“Jesus Saviour, pilot me
Over life’s tempestuous sea.”

The sweet words, drifting out into the night, gave me a
sense of security.

I thought of the Judd sisters then, and their work,

and how they had changed the color of people’s thoughts

. across southern Manitoba. Marrying and raising child-

ren was not the only thing a woman could do; even in

that how unfair life and society were to women; laying

all responsibility on them and giving them no training

for their work, and then if they made mistakes punishing

MY FIRST POLITICAL MEETING 309

them beyond all reason ....I1 thought of Louie Smith,
poor Louie, who by some mischance had fallen a victim to
the wiles of Tom Preston, the bad man of our neighbor-
hood. She had been loyal to him through all, and re-
fused to talk, bearing all the blame.

And Tom still went at large, driving his pacing horse,
with his heavy gold watch chain dangling with charms
straight across his vest; while Louie had not been off her
father’s farm since and ran for cover when any one ap-
proached. No one had held out a kindly hand to Louie
nor had pity on her innocence. Louie had sinned! She
had fallen. How cruel the world was! How cruel we
all were!

I raged in my mind when I thought of her, a fine,
happy, healthy girl a few months before, weeding a
pansy bed, clean and as sweet as a pansy herself in her
print dress and sunbonnet, now a prisoner on her father’s
farm, a fugitive from society. Just a pale, fleeting face |
seen at an upstairs window ... doomed to a life of un-
ending and unrelieved labor, for one moment’s yielding,
and even the church had not spoken out against this in-
justice. | I had taken my knee off the pommel and sat
straight on the saddle to rest myself and when I thought —
of Louie I dug my heels into the sorrel horse in my
intense indignation, and he, taken by surprise, plunged
and bolted for home clattering noisily down the trail with
the stirrups lashing him, leaving me on the side of the
road.

I was not hurt for I fell on the grassy roadside and
I was not far from my destination. I hoped my friends
had gone to bed, and so would not know that the sorrel
had come home without me. If I had been riding the
right and natural way astride the horse this could not
have happened. A side-saddle is surely the last word
in discomfort for both the rider and the horse; another
example of life’s injustice to women I thought as I hast-
ened along through the dark.

Everyone was safely in bed and the horse had gone

$10 CLEARING IN THE WEST

to the gate, which led to the farmyard and stood there
with his head down. I unsaddled him and put him into
his stall. Then let myself into the unlocked kitchen,
smelling pleasantly of spicy cooking and dimly lighted
by the lantern which Mrs. Hornsberg had left burning
forme. Mrs. Hornsberg always baked on Saturday after-
noon for Sunday. She had left on the kitchen table sliced
headcheese, cranberry catchup and fresh buns, and but-
ter and I forgot the sorrows of my sex for the next few
minutes, for I was healthily hungry.

When I had eaten my good humor came back. It
was good to be back in this cheerful warm kitchen with
its reassuring orderliness.

I went into the room where Esther was sleeping and
brought out the “Giant” Scribbler where I kept my diary
and made an entry detailing the events of the day. Then
I went on: “I do not want to be a reformer,” I wrote, “I
will do my share of the work of the world some other
way. I want a big friendly house, white and glistening,
under great spreading trees with a huge fireplace in the
hall which will send out a welcome to the world. Inside
there will be a long table set with gleaming silver and
china with rosebuds and when my friends gather there
they will look through wide windows at the pageant of
the sunset, saffron, rose and flame, and when the night
comes down fading the sky to ashy grey the fireflies will
stipple the purple dusk of the garden with their dots and
dashes and there will be good talk and a great fellow-
ship. No, I do not want to be a reformer and sit in a
‘ dull meeting where the air is dead and stale and every-
one is wondering what I came for ... Agnes Wakefield,
Florence Dombey, Ruth Pinch did not attend political
meetings. Still [ must remember that they lived a long
time ago and this is a new country. I wonder what C. D.
would have thought of Mrs. Brown. Well, I admire her
anyway. She has stood up to life.”

I decided to sell my horse when I found I could not
break him of the habit of bolting for the livery stable

MY FIRST POLITICAL MEETING 311

every time I rode to town. He had wintered the year
before at Curiston’s livery barn, and when he came to
the foot of that street he began to act like a cat that sees
a bed of catnip. I had hoped he would give up the strug-
gle, but he held to the hope that he would one day be able
to throw me and get back.

Then, of course, I thought of George, who could always
use another horse, and who never failed to help any of
his friends. I wrote to George and he came down to see
me and the horse. I had paid seventy-five dollars for the
sorrel; so George gave me ninety and took him off my
hands.

I wish all my financial adventures had ended so
happily.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
MANITOU.

A VACANCY occurred in the Manitou School at the end of
that year and I sent in an application, hardly hoping, but
Inspector E. E. Best had given me two good reports and
had said I was one of the best disciplinarians in his Inspec-
torate, and no doubt I received the appointment on his
recommendation. There were four teachers in Manitou
School, and my room was next to the Principal’s.

The school was a grim frame building at the east of
the little town, with two rooms up and two down, a hard,
worn school-yard, unfenced and unrelieved by tree or
flower. The countryside rolled away to the east and
south, dotted with farm buildings and clumps of trees,
leafless now in January, and swept by wintry winds and
brightened only by the new yellow strawstacks and the
red and white cattle that foraged through them.

But Manitou was a centre of learning, for we had the
Normal School there, one of the three Normal Schools in
the province, and the second week I was there, Normal
students were sent to each room to watch us teach. It
was all very flattering, but embarrassing too. I wished
I could be more like Miss Nimmons of the Carleton School
in Winnipeg and be really able to show them the art of
teaching. My pupils ranged in age from twelve to
eighteen.

I was boarding at the parsonage and that was really
the highlight of my coming to town. The parsonage was
a small frame house facing south, quite near the school.
The front door opened into the parlor and beyond the
parlor was the dining-room, with a kitchen and woodshed
to the right. An open stairs in the dining-room led to
three bedrooms upstairs.

312

MANITOU 313

The McClung family had come from Port Arthur and
the junior members were still bewailing the change. Mr.
and Mrs. McClung were ready at any time to accept the
ruling of the Stationing Committee of the Methodist
Church, even if it took them to the North Pole; though
I know they found our little prairie town bleak and bar-
ren after the scenic beauty of the head of the Lakes.

Wes and Nellie, Herb and Ed let no sentimental
attachment to the church of their fathers put a curb on
their tongues, and they mourned for the companions
and beauties they had been forced to leave. Besides they
found the prairie winter very cold. Having known noth-
ing but prairie winters, I did not know any better, and
wondered why they made such a fuss when a pail of
water froze to the bottom or frost gathered on the walls
an inch thick. That winter of 1892 was a particularly
cold one, but I was so glad to have only a hundred yards
to go to school that the weather mattered but little to me.

Mr. McClung made a good minister for a scattered
flock, for he had all the conquering fire of the circuit rider.
He had three services each Sunday; morning and even-
ing, in his own church, and Kingsley and Kaleida on alter-
nate Sundays in the afternoon. These appointments
were ten or twelve miles out, and no weather, however,
disagreeable, kept him at home. Wes, the boy in the drug
store, went with him to drive the horse when fhe weather
was stormy.

I will admit (though it would have been considered
an unmaidenly confession at that time) that I was much
influenced in my desire to teach in Manitou by the pres-
ence of the minister’s eldest son. I felt sure Mrs. Mc-
Clung’s son must be the sort of man I would like. She
had all the sweetness, charm and beauty of the old-fash-
ioned woman, and in addition to this had a fearless, and
even radical, mind. J had been to the parsonage quite a
few times before I came to board there; and I saw her
methods of training her children. Her one girl, Nellie,
who was my age, did no more than one share of the work;

314 CLEARING IN THE WEST

being a girl, did not sentence her to ali the dishwashing
and bedmaking. The two younger boys took their turn
and there were no complaints from them. Wes, of course,
worked long hours in the drug store, and so he was im-
mune from chores. On the other hand, Nellie had no
special favors because she was a girl. And there was no
talk of having to be accompanied by a brother every
time she went out.

All this I liked, and while I was still profoundly ser-
ious in my determination to travel the highway of life
alone, giving myself to the world of letters, I liked this
tall slim young man of twenty very well indeed, and was
glad of a chance to see him at close range.

He told me one day that I was the brightest find of
their life, since leaving Port Arthur, but knowing what
they thought of the prairie, I did not feel greatly elated.
He would have to do better than that.

I loved the life in this little town, and have always
resented the condescension with which many people view
the small country town. There were many advantages.
I began to take music lessons from Miss Clarke, and paint-
ing lessons from Miss Victoria Mortson, who had a class
in the upstairs parlor at the hotel, where the proprietor’s
relatives (deceased, I think) looked stonily down on us
from their heavy oak frames. We had a teachers’ meet-
ing every Friday evening after four, conducted by the
principal.

Then there were forty Normalites in circulation, and
we had to do what we could to guide their young feet into
the pleasant paths of learning.

Besides all this, we often had parties on Friday nights,
especially I remember the surprise parties to houses in
the country. We did not go unless we were invited, of
course, but the night was left open, and the arrange-
ments were made quickly. The young men found sleighs
and horses, and the girls provided the refreshments;
salmon sandwiches, cakes, a can of coffee, and we were
off. All the seats were taken out of the sleigh and plenty

MANITOU 315

of hay put in, covered with robes, with more robes above,
and we were young enough to sit comfortably on our
heels if necessary.

I remember the moonlight nights, frosty and _ cold,
when the stars seemed twice their natural size in the
deep, bright blue of the sky, and the lights in the houses
we passed, shone warm and yellow on the snow, blurred
by the frost ferns on the windows. We found the Dipper
and the North Star and the Bear while the sleigh bells
rang out their silvery music, and we were unroariously,
unreasonably happy just to be alive and a part of life.

When we arrived, what fun we had playing the
guessing game, where one person thinks of something
and the others ask questions that can only be answered
by “yes” or “no”. I remember how Jessie McEwen, one
of the teachers, held us at bay for a long time at the sur-
prise party at Susie Laidlaw’s, when she thought of Mr.
Harrison’s nose. We found by our questioning that it
couldn’t be bought or carried away; had been given to the
owner; was not as big as a cow; could not be eaten;
moved about freely, and did not belong to anyone present
but was well known by all and admired by some.

There was no pairing off at our parties—that was
understood, but sometimes, coming home, when the moon
was low in the sky, looking a bit weary from shining so
hard all evening; and when the cold had deepened as the
night wore on, there might be a little holding of hands
when we sang “Genevieve, Sweet Genevieve” or “Sweet
Marie’. Nellie Wallen often had cold hands, but not for
long.

We had no telephones, picture-shows, radios, phono-
graphs, daily papers or lending libraries. We made our
own fun—and we had plenty—the sort of fun you can
remember for forty years and find it still warms your
heart.

I have lived in several small towns, but I have not
known any other place that had such a decided flavor.
Manitou was engaging, unexpected, and altogether ad-
venturous. It was half-way between Winnipeg and

t

ae

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316 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Deloraine on the southwestern branch of the C.P.R., had
been settled since 1882, and had held its early settlers,
who, unlike the people in many prairie towns, had come
to stay.

The first winter I was there the W.C.T.U. opened a
reading room and amusement room, and it became a
gathering place for the intelligentsia after four and on
Saturday afternoons. I do not know how we managed to
be heard above the clatter from the outside room, where
there were three croquinole boards always in use, but we
were young and lusty and could raise our voices. We had
hastily arranged unofficial debates, and could have coffee
sent up to us in honest, thick, white cups from the res-
taurant below, at two cups for five cents, just to give the
conversation a continental flavor, and as we argued on
annexation with the United States or the relative value
of science or literature in the schools, or whether or not
it is possible to live without sin, we felt that we were
living in the best tradition of the coffee houses of London.

Manitou’s weekly paper, The Mercury, edited by R. H.
Spedding, was an event each week. Even the advertise-
ments tingled with excitement. When one store, wishing
to show its popularity, stated in a big headline, ‘Three
men killed in the jam at our Saturday bargains!”, the
other store came out with the assurance “There are no
dead men in our jam.” The swift action of changing
their ads each week wore away at last, and there came
a time later when one ad ran from early August to Jan-
uary. This was Billy M ’s confectionary news, and
what was a timely ad in August read queerly when the
bitter north wind scoured the frozen streets, and the
chief problem of life was to keep the furnaces roaring:
“Preserving season is now open,” and “Keep Kool at all
Kosts, with a Kwart of Ice Kream.”

Even our undertakers had personalities of their own.
One of them has what he called a “Skidoodle” of prices.
The other one always invited the friends at funerals to
“Come now, and look your last on the ‘diseased’.”

MANITOU 317

The country around Manitou with its rolling prairie
and beautiful unfenced lands, was an ideal spot for the
training of game-dogs, and four of our citizens had large
kennels of Llewellyn setters of great beauty and value.
When the dogs were taken out to the fields, many people
went to see their performance. The dogs ranged back and
forth at right angles to the wind, racing at high speed,
and with a graceful flowing motion, to get the scent,
then with shorter runs, weaving up the wind to make the
point. When a dog reached the place of close scent he
suddenly stopped as rigid as if turned to stone, one front
paw in mid-air, and his head and tail in line with the
bird which, though hidden in the grass, he had located
accurately by the scent. He would stand there, a picture
of grace and concentration, until released by a word from
his master.

Dogs came from as far away as Kentucky to be trained
on the Manitou fields, but the Field Trials were held at
Morris and Letellier where the wide and level grass
lands along the Red River allowed the judges to watch
the work of the dogs as they ranged for a mile or more.
At the contests the dogs were set down from the crates
in pairs, and the test was made between the two. The
better dog was the one which made the wide range acting
independently of his master, in his zeal to find a bird,
though to pass a scent which was picked up by his com-
petitor gave a dog a very bad mark. When the point
was made, it must be held until his master arrived. Then
at a word the dog, still rigid and pointing, advanced
toward the bird, flushing it for the shoot. In the Field
Trials which were held just before the shooting season,
there was no shooting of birds, and the dogs must have
wondered why all their good work came to nothing.

The Manitou dogs were sometimes taken to Kentucky
and other southern states to compete, and one of Mr.
Wootton’s dogs, “Dick Blondell”, made a great win one
year and had his picture in the Manitou Mercury and, no
doubt, in many other papers.

318 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I remember one Kentucky dog-owner, a_ perfect
colonial with pointed beard and leather leggings and
delightfully soft voice, who came for several seasons,
bringing his wife with him. The colonel had a great fas-
cination for the young crowd, for there was a rumor, un-
confirmed but none the less believed, that he had killed
aman! But if he had, there was no trace of remorse in
his placid countenance.

One of the Manitou dog-owners, whose kennels were
behind his office on the main street, played a violin, not
well, but persistently, and often far into the night. And
sometimes when he had teased the strings into a state of
cataphonics, the dogs lifted up their voices too, and the
other kennels responded until the little town rang dis-
mally. For a long time no one protested. The game-
dogs were part of our village life. But when one of the
early settlers went back to his home in the East and
married his old sweetheart who had been waiting for
twenty years for him to make up his mind, she, accus-
tomed to the sterile silence of that respectable little ham-
let on the Ottawa River, made loud protest against the
dogs and even wrote a letter to the paper about them.
We thought it very strange of her to object. How did
she think dogs could always be kept quiet? Of course
we had to remember that she probably had never, in her
under-privileged life, seen a bird dog turn to stone! We
who knew the dogs and appreciated them were divided
into two classes—those who said they never heard the
dogs, and those who said they liked to hear them.

There was a young Englishman, who lived in the Pem-
bina Valley, twelve miles south of Manitou, who had
been sent to Canada to cure him of his drinking habits,
but with two hard-working bars twelve miles away, the
usual number of thirsty ones ready to drink with him—
and no restrictions on the sale of liquor—he went on from
bad to worse. But one day, in a furniture store in Mani-
tou, he got into an altercation with the proprietor, who
was an old man, and, in his drunken fury, struck Mr.

MANITOU 319

Rossman and knocked him down. When he became sober
and knew what he had done, he declared he would never
drink again. We knew him for twenty years after that
and he kept his word.

There was another young Englishman in the Valley
who had been sent away from home because he was not
very bright, and “father” did not like to look at him. So
he was exiled. His people had plenty of money and sup-
plied him with blankets, guns, knives, saddles—every-
thing but the one thing he craved—permission to go
home. He had been out three years before he dared to
ask permission that he might go home, even for one day.
We all waited for the answer—and hoped. The answer
came at last. No, he could not come back; but his mother
sent him a book, “Twenty-three ways of playing Soli-
taire.”

There was the younger Miss C-———— who had moth-
ered the family since her mother died years ago, but who
had always cherished the hope that she would some day
get her chance. It came at last, and she came to school,
a tall, slight, handsome girl of twenty-five. She had the
crystalline beauty of Ann Harding. And how eagerly
she studied and learned! She was in the principal’s room,
across from my room, but she often came to me after
four, and I was glad to help her with her arithmetic.
Her starved mind drew knowledge in with the fervor of
its own desire; she would be ready to write for her cer-
tificate at the July examinations. One day she came to
my door with her books in her arms.

“It’s all over,” she said, “My brother and his wife
have come to visit and they are both sick with typhoid.
I must nurse them. So good-bye and I thank you for
helping me. Maybe I can come back—lI will not say die
yet—I’m only twenty-five.”

There was a steely glint in her dark blue eyes, and
she held her head high as she walked down the stairs.

She tried again, but something always happened.
Someone broke an arm, or had a baby, or nerves, or both.

But years after there came a time when she could be

320 CLEARING IN THE WEST

spared, and through the influence of a great Canadian
doctor, she got a chance to train in the Chicago General
Hospital. She was beyond the age, but the doctor knew
her worth and got her in. She made a record there
among all those younger women, and went into private
nursing and was doing well. But the home ties were
strong. She loved her own, naturally, having done so
much for them. And she came back and did more.

The years have been kind to her. She is still tall,
straight and handsome, and still the burden-bearer. She
is caring now for an elder sister in Winnipeg, who is
under the delusion that her friends have just phoned for
her to meet them at the Royal Alexandra Hotel, so dressed
for the street she waits in the hall, and cannot under-
stand why the front door is kept locked. Over and over,
still patient and sweet, the gallant sister explains, rea-
sons, cajoles, improvises and watches—a twenty-four
hour shift.

Then there was a gloomy Mrs. Brant who lived a few
miles west of the little town, who attended every funeral
and saw sin, sickness and death in the brightest day of
sunshine. She came to see me when my first baby was
three days old, and looking at this marvel of infant
beauty, wiped away a tear and said, “Don’t set your heart
on raising this little boy, he is marked for death—see
the blue vein across his nose—he’!] never live to wear his
wedding clothes.”

I wanted to throw her downstairs. Blue vein, indeed!
But I thought of it that snowy morning eighteen years
later in Edmonton, at the station, when the little boy,
grown a tall lad now, went out with the Princess Pats...

And I thought of it, with another emotion, twelve
years later still, when we stood among the flowers one
happy summer evening in Edmonton and heard the throb-
bing words of the marriage ceremony, beginning, “We are
gathered in the sight of God and man to unite this man
and this woman... .”

I would have written to her to tell her she was wrong,
but I did not need to tell her then. She knew.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

SUMMER HOLIpays |, |
IN the summer of ’92, having saved part of my salary, I
went to see Aunt Ellen in Alpena, Michigan. I went by
train to Sault Ste. Marie, then by boat to Mackinac where
I spent a day and a night, and by another boat to Alpena.

I had promised myself a trip when I had money, for I
wanted to see places, the Great Lakes, the locks, big ships;
and I wanted to see my Aunt Ellen, who had always
been my ideal of women. Mother had good help at this
time. Martha Guest, sister of Edwin Guest, had come
from Birmingham, a little cheerful English girl.
Hannah was teaching at Northfield School and would be
at home for the holidays, so I was free to spend mine
away from home. More than all, I wanted, I think, a
long train trip.

Trains have always fascinated me, and still do. No
doubt this love of trains is partly due to the fact that
we waited so long for a railway. I love to hear the long
whistle of a train trumpeting through the night, and if
it wakens me I am glad, but generally it works itself
pleasantly into my dreams like sweet music. When I am
old, I want to live near the tracks where I can hear the
trains at night, pounding the rails and screaming out
their signals and ringing their bells. By day I'll see
them, hauling their heavy loads, with their smoke plumes
darkening and thinning, coming back over their shoulders
as they sweep across the plain. With their force and
strength, and their minds set upon the far country, they
will vitalize me again, and fill me with the joy of living.
I hope I will be so near to them that they will shake my
house as they pass, and I will sit up and listen and feel
their vibrations, and be part of them. And in my mind

321

322 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I will go with them as far asI can. Then one night, when
I am very old and tired, I shall not come back, and the
friends will say, “Wasn’t it a nice way to go? The old
lady died in her sleep... .”

But I was speaking of my trip to Alpena. Jessie
McEwen went to Merrickville, her old home in Ontario,
and Jack and Bell Poole, whom we met in Winnipeg, went
to the same part of the country. So we travelled to-
gether to Sault Ste. Marie, and there we had a wonderful
half-day watching the ships go through the locks. I
knew then that geography should be taught by pictures
and by exchange teachers, and that a thousand miles of
travel is better than many books.

When my friends left me, I had to go alone. It was
not so pleasant, but I knew it was good for me; and I
wrote copious notes in a large, black-backed note book,
and tried to look mysterious and important, as a young
lady would who was sent upon a secret mission for her
country’s good.

I had a wonderful day at Mackinac, and bought an
Indian belt at a curio store. I saw the natural bridge
in the distance, and remember most vividly of all, that I
bought a dozen bananas for fifteen cents.

Alpena, on Lake Michigan, was then a lumber town,
all pink and new, with raw lumber houses and with piles
of it on vacant lots, ready for building. My cousin, Char-
ley, was the foreman of a lumber company. He came
home for a few days and took me to the theatre and to a
band concert. My aunt, Ellen, had run a boarding-house
for men when she went to Alpena first, and Mary and
Maggie, her daughters, had helped her. But when the
girls got married and the boys were in good positions, she
built a little house for herself on 7th Street. It was at
this house I visited her. Her youngest son, Duncan, was
still at school, and on Sundays sang in the boys’ choir in
the Episcopalian Church.

My aunt had changed but little. She still had a
laugh in her eyes and a brooky mellowness in her voice.

SUMMER HOLIDAYS 323

Charley seemed older than his mother, and in speaking
of this, she made the only reference I ever heard her
make to the vicissitudes of her life.

“Charley took responsibility too early,” she said, “and
it has left its mark on him. That’s the worst of family
troubles. You can’t keep it all from the children, and a
wound in a child’s heart is like a wound in a young tree.
It grows with the tree, not out, but in.”

Aunt Ellen had many friends and they drove us
around, across the sandy country, baked and bleached
with the heat and sun, but prosperous too, and I saw
saw-mills, shingle-mills and factories. My month went
by very quickly. When I came back I had a gold-headed
cane for my father, a gift from Charley which I kept
under my pillow at night and dreamed of losing, and a
quilt which Aunt Ellen had made for my Mother—blue,
white and pink, in the pattern which is called, “The Side-
walks of New York.”

I had a week at home before school started in Sep-
tember, arriving when the harvest was in full swing.

Mother was rather worried about my attitude toward
money. I had been teaching two full years and had saved
nothing. I had earned over a thousand dollars and had
nothing to show for it but a few clothes and books. Fred
Vigfuson, one of our hired men, gave me his support by
saying that I had used my money wisely—money was
made for spending. Fred had saved all he earned the
first five years he worked and then “backed” a friend’s
note and lost it all. Now he said he had just one rule:
“Spend your money so fast no one can steal it from you.”
The whole question of spending versus saving was dis-
cussed when we sat at the long table in the kitchen at
mealtime, and though Fred and I were convinced our
idea of spending had great merit, we were voted down.

Nap, the old dog, getting a little bit stiff now with
advancing years, lived at my brother Will’s house all the
time—beloved playmate of the children—but when I came
home he returned without urging and stayed the week.

324 CLEARING IN THE WEST

Even Leonora, the Queen of the Cats, gave me a greet-
ing, howbeit constrained and haughty. Leonora, under
the weight of years, had Iost her enthusiasms. She was a
real personality who was known all over the neighbor-
hood because of her many descendants. She was our first
cat after the tragedy of Sylvia, and was presented to us
by Mr. William Ingram, our neighbor, when she was a
little ball of fur about the size of a teacup.

Leonora’s many kittens were welcomed by the neigh-
bors to keep down the tawny striped gophers which had
arrived in large numbers and dug holes in the gardens
and ate the young plants. It required no planned sales
talk to place kittens at that time. They were a favor,
spoken for in advance. Eighteen for the season seemed
a very good return. When the next summer Leonora had
a mere trifling six, twice, we were a little disappointed.
But we did not need to be, for Leonora made up for the
shortage by having an extra six in September.

She was a long, slender cat, swift on her feet, and a
deadly enemy of gophers. She hunted for sport, not
necessity, and piled up the day’s catch in windrows for
all to see. She lived on praise and demanded it from
every member of the family. When she was five years
old she left us mysteriously and for no apparent reason.
She walked out on us. We feared a wolf or a fox had
killed her—she was in no condition to fight when she left
—and our grief was all the more acute because of this.

Nap hunted up and down the banks of the creek
and all over the neighborhood. Inquiries were made in
vain. We had enough cats to go on with, of course, but
we sorrowed greatly for Leonora. We were sorry we ever
criticized her fertility. She had embarrassed us with
this fatal gift for reproduction. Eighteen kittens per
season is a heavy stock to handle, even though the
prairies were wide and new settlers were coming. There
were times when we wished Leonora were not so am-
bitious. Indeed, there had been some loose talk of drown-
ings. However, she had her revenge on us now. If we

SUMMER HOLIDAYS 325

loved her in life too little, we loved her in death too well.
I labored hard on a poem during this sad time, in
which mournful mention was made of her many excellent
qualities, and deep remorse for our criticism.
I think there were ten verses in all—I remember the
last two:

“What caused you thus to leave us, Leonora?
Was it a green-field-far-away attraction?
Or did our comments on your swift addition
Drive you to subtraction?

A row of asterisks here indicated the passing of time,
and then another verse appeared:

“And while we sorrowed sore for lost Leonora
One day she hurriedly came in the door,
And following her came little cats galora,
Running and leaping on the kitchen floor.”

So the story ended happily and Leonora lived out her
days, her bright coat fading as the years rolled on and her
sunny disposition growing sour and crabbed with the
infirmities of age. But her good works and labors of
love were not forgotten. She reigned undisputed Queen
of the Cats, and was one of the few animals I have known
to die of old age. While I was at home I kept a record of
her descendants on the smooth side of the granary door,
but after I left, this good practice was not followed, and
so a complete record can not be given. The score stood
at sixty-eight when I left, and the end was not yet!

CHAPTER XXXIX
IN WHICH THE FIRST PART OF My LIFE ENDS

BECAUSE of heavy storms, and snow-filled cut-banks, I
went home at Christmas by Winnipeg. The C.P.R. had
a way of keeping their trains moving, which the Northern
Pacific had not. Our service on the Morris-Brandon
branch was called a tri-weekly service; and some thought
the spelling should be changed. But we were not disposed
to be critical of it. It had come to us in our sore need and
broken the winter of our discontent. It was our own
railway, and we regarded it with great tolerance.

I arrived in Winnipeg at 4 o’clock in the afternoon of
a blinding snow storm, but a bit of rough weather, did
not prevent Helen Hislop from being at the station to
meet me, for I was going to spend the night with her.
The Hislop home was always open. When I attended
Normal two years before I was often there, and enjoyed
its high hospitality. Another place could always be set
at the long table, and the conversation was easy to enter.
The father was an alderman of the city. Jack was in
Medical College. Helen had been teaching at Plympton
near Winnipeg, and the others were at school.

That night Helen had arranged a party and I remem-
ber meeting Edgar Burgess, who afterwards was princi-
pal of the Manitou School. I do not remember that we
danced, and I know there were no cards. I think we only
talked. Mr. Hislop rarely spoke (I know now—+there
were no open spaces in the conversation), but often shook
his head, as he looked at us with his kindly smile.

Mrs. Hislop was a leader in the good works of the
city, a woman of fine ability, and a heart as big as
humanity’s needs. She was president of the Women’s
Foreign Missionary Society in Saint Andrew’s Church

826

IN WHICH THE FIRST PART OF MY LIFE ENDS = 327

and was referred to as the “Foreign Woman” by her
children. Her laugh had in it a contagious merriment
that made every one join her. She had a driving ambi-
tion which inspired her children and her friends, and
I have always been grateful to her for the high value
she set on learning. She was always busy; doing for other
people as well as for her own, but she found time to read
many books and could summarize a book with great deft-
ness and skill. She wrote a little book, later, called Streets
of Winnipeg, which can be found in the Western
Libraries.

At ten o’clock Mr. Hislop, true to his Scottish tradi-
tion, took the “Book”, and read a psalm, and we all went
on our knees while he commended his family and friends,
his country and her destiny to the mercy of “Him that
sitteth above the clouds,” and having done this, went to
bed, leaving us to go on with our talk. But Mrs. Hislop,
who was as young as any of us, stayed on until the last
guest had departed.

That night Helen and I talked, until the dawn was
showing blue, behind the window blind. We did not know
when we would see each other again, and there were many
things to be said.

The next morning I left on the Souris branch of the
C.P.R. for Treesbank. This line has been extended from
Glenboro to Souris and by coming to Treesbank I was
within four miles of home.

The pale cold light of a stormy wintry morning lay
on the countryside, cattle were huddled close together in
the shade of the straw stacks, and the smoke from the
houses twisted by the scouring wind soon lost itself in the
colorless confusion of the snowy air. I could see muffled
figures moving about the barnyards attending to the
stock. I knew the hens would be kept in until noon, when
the sun would have more power, and even then it would
be only the strong-minded hens that would come out, and
they would be quite offensive about it and scornful of the
timid ones with their tongues. If you wish to hear the

828 CLEARING IN THE WEST

swift jagged tearing of reputations, listen to a flock of
hens, and yet they are always quite impersonal, and dis-
interested. —“It’s nothing to me, but facts are facts.”

I loved the winter scene, even when the wind whipped
the loose snow into billows, which rising and falling ob-
scured the landscape. Plenty of snow meant moisture for
the soil, and the deadly frost killed noisome insects and
made possible No. 1 Hard wheat, which was our fortune.
There was a kindness in the cold. It made food taste
better, fires burn more brightly, and brought people into
closer family circles. I knew what the psalmist meant
when he spoke of the virtuous woman “who was not
afraid of the snow for her household.” She knew it drove
her family into the circle of lamplight and made it easier
to get the children to do their homework, and strength-
ened the bonds of affection.

This was my first time to travel over the long bridge
flung from bank to bank of the Souris, high above where
once the little village of Millford stood. I looked down
at the deserted village below us, as we moved carefully
over the long bridge, where once many people had lived.
The buildings had long since been moved to Glenboro,
and only cellars, old wells and piles of tin cans were left.
Major Roger’s dream had come to this!

Treesbank, a mile or so from the north bank of the
Souris, was the new station, and there I found not Jack
waiting for me, as I expected, but Fred Vigfuson, the
man who believed in spending his money as he made it.

Fred was of Icelandic origin, and was somewhat of a
rover. I asked Fred about his trip this year, and found
he was going to California. Fred had seen more of the
world than any of us, for each winter he went somewhere,
returning in the spring, quite willing to work another
summer.

Even when Fred told me my father had a bad cold, I
was not alarmed, though it was seldom that he was ailing.
Jack had gone with Hannah to Northfield school, for it
was her closing concert, and there “were great doings,”

IN WHICH THE FIRST PART OF MY LIFE ENDS 29
with a Christmas tree as high as the ceiling and a flag
drill. I gathered from Fred’s conversation that he would
have been there himself, but for my untimely arrival. I
might as well have stayed a day in Winnipeg.

When we reached home, the house seemed empty, and
silent. There was no one in the kitchen or living-room.
Mother came out of the bedroom and motioned to me to
be quiet.

“‘He’s asleep,” she said in a whisper. “He tried to stay
awake to see you, but he dropped off. It’s just a cold I
hope.” She looked anxious.

We went down to the kitchen and sat beside the cook
stove. Fear had us in its grip.

“You don’t think it’s serious, do you?” I asked her.
My mother knew as much as any doctor.

“Anything is serious, at his age,” she said sadly. “He
was eighty on the 12th of December. Borrowed time,
Nellie. Three score years and ten.”

I had intended to write to him, for his eightieth birth-
day. But I had forgotten, and I knew how pleased he
would have been. If IJ had only remembered!

“We had a roast turkey,” she was saying, “and Addie
and Fred came. Addie was eight the next day. So we
had eight candles on the cake for her. He told her he
was ten times her age, but would never be that again;
and he was in a great good humour. ... But there’s a
change in him now, Nellie! And he does not even ask
about the weather! You remember his first question was
always, ‘What is the day like?’ But not now. Not since
he took the chill a week ago. He came in from the barn
with his teeth chattering, though it was a fine day. I got
him into bed and put the hot water bottle at his feet, and
hot stove lids... .”

The day after Christmas, our local doctor suggested
a consultation and Jack drove to Brandon for a well-
known doctor, who came, warmed his hands, went in,

33¢ CLEARING IN THE WEST

tok a look at his patient, and said in his blunt Seotch
way,

“You’re a pretty old man, Mr. Mooney, and have lived
your life. You can’t expect to live much longer.”

Father roused himself at that, and sat up.

“T’ll live out my time, Doctor,” he said. “I am not
going to die until I have to; even if you think I should.”

The doctor, shaking his head, proceeded to examine
him. ‘A general break-up of the system,” he said
brutally. ... “It’s a case of the one-horse shay. ... I don’t
know why Anderson wanted a consultation... .”

Not a kind word, not a friendly observation. The old
doctor could not soften his manner, even though his
patient was dying.

It was Jack who spoke his mind when he knew what
had happened. ‘You were brought here to do some-
thing,” Jack said to him, “and you have only discouraged
him.”

“My dear boy,” the doctor said petulantly, “I can’t
work miracles, I can’t save your Father... .”

“We do not expect you to work a miracle,” Jack said,
“but we do expect you to speak civilly, even kindly to
him.”

“T don’t believe in soft soaping,’”’ the old doctor said.
“Your father probably wants to know the truth. He will
want to put his house in order in the few days that are
left.”

“His house has been in order for many years,” Mother
replied. “He made his peace with God many years ago,
and he has not an enemy in the world .... We knew he
was a very sick man. Our own doctor told us that. But
we thought you might be able to do something to prolong
his days.”

After the doctor had had his dinner, Fred drove him
back to Brandon.

Father made light of the doctor’s verdict. “That ould
trap,” he said, lapsing into his richest Irish brogue,

IN WHICH THE FIRST PART OF MY LIFE ENDS 331

“would rather tell a man he was dying than anything
else ....I’d like to make a liar out of him, and I believe
if I could get past March, I’d go another year. ... Any-
way don’t let it trouble you. He’s right in saying, I’ve
had a long life, and a pleasant one. I’ve lived near the
soil and feel friendly to it. It will lie lightly on my bones.”

The next day, Mr. Howarth, the Methodist minister
from Stockton, came through a heavy snow-storm and
stayed all afternoon. He was a cheerful little man with
a hearty laugh and it was glorious to hear Father joining
him. We were almost hopeful that day.

Before the minister left Father asked Mother and all
of us to come in, and Mr. Howarth read the 4th chapter
of John, “Let not your hearts be troubled,” and we drank
the wine and ate the bread of the Sacrament, and after
that a great peace seemed to fall on the house. The last
words I heard my Father utter were the words of a
hymn:

“The gospel bears my spirit up,
A faithful and unchanging God
Lays the foundation of my hope
In oaths, and promises and blood.”

Jack was the most hopeful of all of us; he could not be-
lieve the end was near.

At noon on Tuesday mother sent for Lizzie and Will
and we all stood beside his bed. As we waited in silence
we could see his breath was growing shorter and more
labored. Outside the window Nap began to howl. Mother
nodded to me and I went out and brought him into the
room where he stood as silent and motionless as a dog
of stone.

When the great silence fell, and Will had closed his
eyes and Mother had gone out of the room to stop the
clock, Nap walked over to the bedside with his fur brist-
led and looked long and wistfully at the still face on the
pillow. None of us spoke of it then but we all felt that it

332 CLEARING IN THE WEST
was right that one dumb beast should stand among the
mourners.

On January the fifth, we laid him away on the hill-
side in the Millford cemetery, and came back to an empty
house.

And so closed the first chapter of my life.

CHAPTER XXXX
Lire GoES ON, No MATTER WHO DIES

I DID not go back to Manitou, until the first of February.
Hannah had to go for she was going to the Collegiate in
Winnipeg for her First Class Certificate, and she had only
six months to do the year’s work. So the four of us tried
to be company for each other; Mother, Jack, Martha
Guest and myself. Fred Vigfuson had gone on his annual
trip.

Mother and I were getting black dresses made by the
Misses Rae in Wawanesa, two Paisley women, who had
a little shop above a harness shop. I don’t think I ever
saw the elder Miss Rae without a few pins in her
mouth, but she was a genius at designing dresses. My
best dress was of cashmere, and had a pintucked front,
with a flaring collar. A rough serge dress, also black of
course, had a double breasted basque with large lapels,
and smoked pearl buttons. I had a dozen black-edged
handkerchiefs, and black-edged notepaper. Mother wore
a long crepe veil, draped over her bonnet, and seemed
very old to me, though she was only sixty.

Women may not live any longer than they did then,
but their expectancy of life has changed. As long as I
can remember my mother she was looking forward to her
death; and had her shroud made according to the custom
of her country. Many a Christmas day my young heart
was saddened by her proclamation that she might not be
with us next year. By her own attitude she made us
feel she was on the brink of the grave all her life. After
my father left us, she said she was sure she would not
be long behind him.

I believe Jack missed him more than any of us. Father
had been his companion all these years, the partner in

333

334 CLEARING IN THE WEST

all his farming operations. Whatever happened outside
had to be told to him; how were the pigs thriving? Was
the oat straw holding out? Better not let the milking
cows drink the ice-cold water, it was not good for them.

Now, when the work was over, Jack seemed lost and
restless. Having no man, left him all the chores to do
and that helped to fill his time. We must not go out
anywhere, for three months at least, except to church.
Certainly not to the rink, or to a party .... or anywhere
that might give us pleasure... . and I believe I am honest
in saying we did not want to go. We had plenty to do,
and that month we read Scott’s Talisman in the evenings.

I liked to go out to the stables and do the milking in
the evening. It was a peaceful scene; the cows looked
contented and warm in their stalls; and it was nice to
see the cats sitting on their backs, when we made the
last trip before going to bed to see that everything was
all right. The light of the lantern caught their green
eyes that shone like pairs of emeralds down the length of
the barn. The cats had their own milk pan and were fed
twice a day, and when we gave them their portion, the
pan was quickly ringed about with mounds of gray and
black fur. These were the barn cats and did not come
into the house at all, but having regular food, were law-
abiding and gentle, and never molested the chickens. We
considered they were a real asset in keeping away rats,
weasels and mink.

I left for Manitou at the end of January, sorry to
leave, but I wanted to go to the Collegiate the next year,
and I must earn the money; and I really loved my work
in the Manitou School. Every day was a delight, and the
Principal, who was preparing a class for the July exam-
inations, allowed me to come in at four and take the
mathematics, and so I got a grounding in algebra, trig-
nometry and geometry then, which made it possible for me
the next year at Winnipeg to win one of the Isbister
Scholarships.

The Principal was a born teacher, with a genius for

LIFE GOES ON, NO MATTER WHO DIES 336

making difficult lessons plain. And he led us through the
intricacies of progressions and permutations, making it
appear as simple as long division. One of his sayings was
that there was no step in mathematics more difficult than
Square Root. I shall always remember him with grati-
tude and deep affection dyed with heavy regret that, in
his dark hours, though he had helped many, none of us
were able to help him.

He had acquired early in life a taste for liquor. But
had gone through University and had made a brilliant
record. He became Principal of the High School in his
home town, where every one knew of his failing and tried
to help him. But at last, even his friends had to admit
failure. He lost two other positions before he came west.
For one year after he came to Manitou he had not tasted
liquor, and was confident of success. Then he became
engaged to a young teacher out in the country. She rode
into town on Friday nights, a gallant little figure on her
black horse, with a red quill in her hat.

One day he told us he was going to be married at
Thanksgiving. He was very happy over the prospect
of having a home and had rented and furnished a little
house not far from the school. Before the time set for
the wedding the crash came. Monday morning he came
to school quite befuddled, and with a black eye. Our
great concern then was to get him out of sight before
the Trustees saw him.

The bigger boys and girls knew, of course, but they
were loyal, and that outbreak passed. I never saw any-
one struggle harder against an appetite, and, when it be-
came generally known that he was putting up a fight,
everyone in that little town tried to help him, including
the hotel proprietor and the bartender, Allie Bird. The
little girl was loyal, and they were married against the
advice of her friends. Her action was a vital theme of
discussion. Some thought she might succeed; they were
the younger and more romantic ones. The older ones said
no woman could reform a man by marrying him.

336 CLEARING IN THE WEST

At midsummer they left, and went to the Coast to
make another start. Again we watched the train toiling
up the grade with the two of them waving to us from the
rear platform. I often thought of her and wondered what
I would have done.

I wish I could give the story a happy ending. But it
ended in tragedy. After some years of uncertainty,
hopes, fears and disappointments, the end came. And so
in the loss of this brilliant man, who was everybody’s
friend but his own, with all his gifts of mind and heart,
remembering what he might have been, I have another
unsettled account with the liquor traffic.

, It is strange to look on these days when men were
divided into two classes; they either drank, or they didn’t
drink. No woman drank, needless to say.

No doubt our severe climate and the pioneer conditions
helped to draw this clear line. Man was pitted against
the forces of nature every day, and could not afford to be
off his guard for one moment. We had no bridges to give
safe passage over streams; no road signs, no protecting
railings. In summer the work had to be done, and done
on time; every day was precious; there was no place for
loiterers! And in winter with storms and low tempera-
tures, long journeys and dark nights every faculty was
needed; clear eye, strong arm, good judgment, courage,
which is quite different from fool-hardiness ....

As cold and hard a country as ours has one unalter-
able law—the survival of the fittest. The incompetent
were like little candles in the wind.

When we knew that a man drank to excess, we regard-
ed him with a curious, melancholy interest, knowing that,
like the men seen in the Vision of Merza, sooner or later
he would drop from sight.

So our attitude had to be one of unyielding opposition,
the only alternative being the easy-going, shallow toler-
ance of the unconcerned.

LIFE GOES ON, NO MATTER WHO DIES 337

Mr. Betts, one of the partners of Huston and Betts,
announced one Sunday morning in church that if all the
young people would come to the vestry of the church
the next evening at seven he would organize an Epworth
League. He said that there had been some objections to
a young people’s society in older places, but he believed
the objections were trivial and unworthy.

When we got home, we asked Mr. McClung what the
objections were, and found that some of the older people
believed there was no spiritual value in any meeting of
the young people alone, the lambs should be kept
with the sheep—because a young people’s meeting would
naturally be a place where matches were made; in the
vulgar speech of that day—‘sparking schools.” He dis-
missed the objections by saying it was a very good place
for young people to meet and learn to know each other;
and so, with his approval, we were launched as an Ep-
worth League. The Presbyterians had a Christian
Endeavor, which met the same night, but we honored
John Wesley in the name of ours; and incidentally we
learned much of the history of the Founder of Methodism.

The time came for me to lead the meeting, and the
subject was spring, with the psalm about the voice of
the singing bird being heard in the land for the scripture
reading. I made adequate preparation, and I was deter-
mined to speak without notes. I had had experience in
public speaking; yes, indeed, two debates at Normal, and
success in both!

I was going to be funny, too; I would give the mem-
bers a treat. I had no intention of reading from a tremb-
ling paper, as some of the others had done. I wrote a
paraphrase on the psalm. A little humor was what was
needed in the Epworth League.

But something happened when I began to speak. The
faces in front of me blurred, melted and rolled away,
leaving me alone in a trackless sea. My throat went dry,
and my tongue thickened, and the loud silence thundered
in my ears....

338 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I don’t know how long I stood. When I came out of
it and found I could speak once more, I told them I had
prepared a speech on the Coming of Spring, but somehow
it seemed to have gotten away from me, and Spring
would have to come on just as it had always done, un-
aided and unsung, so far as I was concerned.

No one had ever done so poorly, and I was cast down
and dismayed. Mr. Betts was very encouraging and told
me about Disraeli and others who had failed in their first
efforts, But I knew I was through, I could never try
again, indeed, I did not see how I could ever come to a
meeting again.

But after I went to bed that right, I tried to decide
what had happened to me. I think I asked the Lord quite
pointedly why he had let me down. If I had not prepared
I would have known what had caused my downfall. But I
had worked on my speech... . I remembered mother say-
ing it would be a good thing for me to fail in my examina-
tion. .. . it would take some of the conceit out of me. I
had had things too easy, she said, and it was good for
everyone to feel the winds of the world in his face.

I found no peace until I determined to try it again.
I knew that when one is thrown from a horse, the only
thing to do is to climb on again. The longer you wait
the harder it is. I would ask Mr. Betts to let me try the
next Monday night.

I prepared all over again, in a more chastened and
humble mood. I began to think of my audience, instead
of myself. The Coming of Spring should mean something
to them. I thought of the fields ready for the crops,
like our minds eager for impressions. I was humbled to
the dust, emptied of “self” in the words of the hymn, in
true learner’s mood, I no longer worried over the sort of
appearance I had made. I knew it did not matter.

When Monday night came, I confessed what had
happened. Then I told them I had failed because I had
nothing to say that was worth saying; I had thought of
the subject, superficially, and missed the meaning of it.

LIFE GOES ON, NO MATTER WHO DIES 438

My talk may have been disjointed and crude, no doubt it
was, but it was sincere, and before I was done, my audi-
ence began to ask questions. Mr. Betts asked me to go
on with the topic the next night. I knew I had kindled
a fire, for I felt it in my own heart.

Then I got my first lesson in public speaking, which
is to have something to say which you think should be
said and never mind how you say it, or what sort of a
figure you are making, say it! Get it over to your audi-
ence as clearly as you can. If you can use beautiful
words, crisp singing words, words that are sweet in your
own mouth, because of their association, so much the
better, but words are only the paper and string in which
the thought is wrapped.

The high peak of social life in Manitou came at the
time of the lacrosse games, particularly when our boys
played with Morden. Morden was a larger town than
Manitou, twenty miles east, and all the rivalry that can
be felt between two neighboring towns, swept over our
hearts when we even thought of Morden.

The first game of the season was played on the 24th
of May, and if the day were warm and fine, the summer
dresses and hats came out and made the grand-stand’s
seats of bare boards blossom like a garden. But unfor-
tunately the Good Queen’s birthday was often a sour and
sullen day, with lowering clouds of heavy hue, and mean
winds that curled up icily through the slatted floor of
the grand stand.

The 24th in 1892 was a mean and disappointing day
when new dresses had to be left lying on the spare-room
beds. Not all either, for the Graham girls had come with-
in the year from Ontario, where the Spring comes earlier
and the 24th is considered a real summer day. So Minnie
and Mary, blue with cold, but upborne by that fortitude
that new and pretty clothes can give, came forth in pink
and yellow dotted muslin with parasols to match.

No weather could keep the game from being played,

340 CLEARING IN THE WEST

short of a snow storm, and the 24th did not often fall
that low. So the game went on; and the grandstand, full
of Manitou and Morden supporters rocked with emotion,
and slander and railings.

Mothers and wives and admirers sat and cheered,
encouraged and advised the players. Mrs. Bradley, whose
son Tom was one of Manitou’s fleetest runners, happened
to be sitting directly behind one of Morden’s lawyers, an
elderly gentleman, who had been a lacrosse player in his
youth, in Ontario. When Tom began one of his lightning
races down the field carrying his stick and the ball in it,
high above his head, twisting, dodging, leaping, foiling all
Morden’s attempts to trip, waylay or throw him, his
mother was naturally excited, and leaned over her seat to
direct Tom’s progress. Mrs. Bradley, being an English
woman, carried her umbrella at all times and never had
better use of it than in that tense moment, for she grasped
it in both hands and beat with it upon the broad shoulders
of Mr. Craik, until her friends on each side forcibly res-
trained her. For after all, though he was from Morden,
he really had not said a word.

The young ladies who came with the team from Mor-
den matched wits with us in describing the shots and
failures.

One thing sweetened the performance and kept a
measure of good humor in the day. Meals were served
usually by the Church Ladies in the Exhibition Build-
ing, if the weather permitted, and here mingled victors
and vanquished, home and foreign contestants and sup-
porters in the common fellowship of a good meal.

“It’s a fine pie, anyway,” said big Dave Duncan, with a
section of pie neatly balanced on his fork. ‘Boy, if the
Manitou lads could play lacrosse as well as the Manitou
women can cook, we’d never get a look in.”

“No one would think to look at you now, that you
would hit an innocent lad with your stick, and him doing
no more than taking the ball from you,” said Mrs. Bren-

LIFE GOES ON, NO MATTER WHO DIES 341

nagh, whose son Sam was carrying a black eye from the
game. Big Dave was full of remorse.

“Say, I’m sorry, Mrs. Brennagh. That boy of yours
doesn’t look where he is going, he just runs into things,
not blind exactly, but just doesn’t care. But I’m sorry he
ran against my stick.”

The great day came, when Manitou lacrosse team went
to Winnipeg to play the “Capitols” for the Champion-
ship of Western Canada, and the C.P.R. put on an ex-
cursion train, which left Manitou at eight in the morn-
ing and returned that evening, and the little town arose,
packed up two meals, took the baby and grandma, and
went to see their boys play. And they saw their boys
win the game in a fair fight; and the silver cup presented
to Charley Gordon, the captain. The local photographer
had taken their picture before they left, knowing that
history was being made.

In 1893, I went to the Collegiate Institute, in Winni- .
peg, where Mr. F. H. Schofield was the principal. Hannah
had been successful the year before, and received in the
July examinations the highest marks that had been taken
in the Province. I knew I could not hope to equal her
achievement. I would be well satisfied if I could get
through.

I went to Winnipeg about December the first and
roomed with Hannah, who had received an appointment
on the city staff. She lived at a stately home on Ross
Street, where our landlady told us quite often that she
kept boarders for company only, and really did not need
the money.

“We have a business in the city,” she said, in the fine
old English tradition, and when I found out quite by acci-
dent, that it was a livery business, I wondered why she
did not say so.

Her parlor was high-ceilinged and cold, with a marble-
topped mantle, above the unused fireplace, and was only
used by us, when we had callers, by Hannah rather, for

342 CLEARING IN THE WEST

she had a theological admirer now, who came once @
week. By special concession the parlor door might be
left open after dinner, so that some of the heat from the
coal-stove in the hall could penetrate its chilling depths.
The young man wore his fur-lined coat and Hannah put
on her fur coat when she heard the bell ring. However,
the call lasted until ten o’clock, and the cold room was
not even commented on. We were a hardy race.

Hannah went home at the end of 1893, and took the
Northfield School; and I left the lady on Ross street too,
and found a much happier place at 464 Jemima St., the
home of Dr. and Mrs. W. A. Dunbar and their daughter
Jessie. My friend Jessie McEwen, who had taught with
me in Manitou, came with me, she too was going to take
her “first”, at the Collegiate, and we spent six months to-
gether very happily.

Jessie Dunbar sang in St. Andrew’s choir, and was the
centre of a jolly crowd of young people, who were often
entertained by her; and we were welcomed by them. But
we had to do a year’s work in the six months, so we spent
our evenings delving into the prescribed text-books, up-
stairs in our little room, where Jessie used the wash-
stand, and I the bureau, there being no room for a table.
But we were comfortable, well-fed, and contented, and
we were getting on.

At the Collegiate it was easy to see who among
the students were spending his or her own money,
and who were still supported by parents. The
latter came late, unprepared, talked of parties and dan-
ces, and regarded the daily grind of the High School as
a tiresome interruption of their good times. We who had
been teaching, and had earned our own money, were in
deadly earnest, and did everything we were expected to
do, listened to the lectures, and never missed a class. No
doubt the young ones resented our industry. I know I
envied them, and would have been glad to be going to
the parties, and wearing pretty clothes too. But it could
not be, so I stifled all such vain imaginings in the pasteur-

LIFE GOES ON, NO MATTER WHO DIES 343
ized pages of “Green’s Short History of the English
People.”

Mr. Schofield had perfect control of the Collegiate.
We did what we were told without question. Every inch
of that forbidding brick structure on Kate Street, was
sacred to him, and because of him, to us. We walked the
halls soberly, and we walked in the middle of the halls,
no one ran up or down stairs; the desks had their shining
surfaces, undefaced.

And how we worked!

When the examinations came, I weighed ninety-five
pounds. But when I sat down to write, I had a feeling
that I knew the course, and with any sort of fair papers
I should be pretty sure of passing.

When I went home after the examinations, I slept the
clock around for the first two weeks. On August the first,
we got the news. Jessie and I had both passed. Mr. Scho-
field wrote me, and Mr. E. A. Garrett, the history and
chemistry teacher, and the whole world seemed to me to
be a joyful place.

I had gone to Wawanesa that morning for the mail,
expecting the returns and there they were on the third
page of the Manitoba Free Press. Miss Shields in the
Post Office told me, before I opened the paper.

A few days after I had a letter from the Treherne
School Board offering me a position, and I accepted it,
without delay. Mr. McClung had been moved to Treherne
by the Stationing Committee, so I would still be with the
family I liked so well. And though the eldest son was
still in Manitou he would come sometimes to see us.

CHAPTER XXXXI
TREHERNE

TREHERNE was then a village of perhaps six hundred
people, and had three teachers, in the dark green wooden
building, at the south-western end of the settlement. [
had the middle room, grades 6, 7, and 8, and sang in the
choir, and joined the W.C.T.U. and helped with the Mis-
sion Band each Monday evening at seven o’clock.

The social life of the little town centered around the
church, whose doors were open, and windows alight
each night except Saturday, when everyone was supposed
to repair early to bed, after blackening boots and in-
dulging in the weekly bath, or as the English people said,
“strip-wash’’, with a mind sobered and calmed and ready
to receive the message at the morning service.

Mr. McClung was an advocate of the early closing of
the stores, and preached about it. Indeed he preached
about anything that concerned the welfare of his people.
He refused to take refuge behind Amos or Elijah, or any
ancient authority. The divisions among the Children of
Israel were used by him as a point of departure for his
sermons, but he quickly arrived at the vagaries and
wanderings of the people of Treherne and Manitoba. He
denounced governments, bombarded the liquor traffic,
but never failed to preach a wide gospel of redeeming
love.

He was a small man, in stature, with a fine head of
brown curly hair, bushy brows, fine forehead, and large
lustrous eyes of steel blue. He was fortunate in hav-
ing a musical speaking voice, and was independent of
choirs and organists, for he could lead the singing like
an orchestra.

The family were often worried over his pulpit utter-

344

TREHERNE 345

ances, and I was too, and wished he would use the soft
pedal, once in a while. But when we tried to advise him
he knew our voices for the voice of the Tempter trying
to turn him aside from the plain, though thorny path of
duty, and kept to his high resolves.

He was a man of untiring energy and had a keen mem-
ory for faces and names; and was undaunted by circum-
stances. He was possessed of a shrewd worldly wisdom
which contributed largely to his success as a minister.
When one of the leading men in Treherne became deeply
offended over his blunt and uncompromising denunciation
of the government, he went at once to see him, and
came back with some of the man’s books, and said they
had had a wonderful argument. When he found a farmer
beating his horses on a slippery hill, because the poor
brutes could not hold their feet, he drew off to one side
of the road, got out and denounced the driver for his
“devilish” temper. Then unhitched “George,” his own
horse, and brought him over and hooked him to the tongue
of the sleigh and helped the team to get to the top of
the hill. But the incident did not end there, for he went
to see the man the next day, brought him under convic-
tion of sin, signed him up for the “kingdom”, and a few
Sundays afterwards received him and his family into the
Church.

He was as hungry a reader as I ever have known.
Every printed page attracted him, and I know it was
only his fervid desire to save souls that drove him away
from his reading. He cut columns from newspapers, made
annotations on the books he read, and spent every cent
he could spare, and more, on books and periodicals.

When we were in Treherne I got a copy of Trilby, Du
Maurier’s much talked of book, and read it with a distinct
sense of adventure. Here was a very daring book surely,
fascinating but perilous! Before I had finished Mr.
McClung sounded the alarm and spoke very seriously to
me. An evil book could poison the mind like nothing else,
and he believed I should not finish it. He would have been

346 CLEARING IN THE WEST

more disturbed if he had known who sent it to me, but I
carefully suppressed that information. He asked me to
forego the book as an exercise of will power. Character
was built by self-denial, and character was the object of
all our teaching. Under the influence of his eloquent
appeal, I agreed that I would not read the book for a
week.

The more I thought of the story, the more I desired to
know the end. I simply could not leave Trilby at loose
ends. ... I left the book on a little table in the hall and
waited. ...

That day when Mrs. McClung called him to come
down for dinner he did not hear her and she had to go up
and get him, and then I knew my plan was working....
He had to go out for the afternoon and I let him have
another bout with the book before he went. I wanted him
to be approaching the great scene in the theatre before
I took it away.

The next day I went into his study and got the book.
Mrs. McClung and Nell were both in the plot, and we
enjoyed seeing him hunting for it. He couldn’t very well
ask any of us, and besides we had all gone very high-
minded and detached from earthly joys. We talked of
self-sacrifice and self-denial, and the joys of renounce-
ment.

“I think you should read that book yourself,” I said
to him at last. “So you could see for yourself how subtle
it is, and fascinating. Indeed I think it might be well to
preach a sermon on it.”

He looked at me with darkening suspicion.

“It wouldn’t take you long to read it—now,” I said.

“Young woman,” he said, looking at me with his
brows drawn down, “you’ve got me and you know it. I
believe you left it there to tempt me. It’s the most
diabolically interesting book I ever read, and I’m not so
sure that it is an evil book either. Where is it?”

I produced the book, and a great silence settled down
on the little study while the Chairman of the Treherne

TREHERNE 847
District of the Methodist Church followed the fortunes
of poor Trilby.

The publication of W. T. Stead’s book, “Two and Two
makes Four,” in 1891 dropped a stone into the peaceful
waters of religious thought, whose widening waves reach-
ed as far as Treherne where we read the book with creepy
fascination.

Mr. McClung took a firm stand against it, not that
he doubted the sincerity of the great Editor, but he
believed that it was not God’s will that there should be
communication between those who had passed over and
those who were left. John Wesley’s house had been visited
by spirits who rang bells, pounded on doors, rattled
dishes, moved furniture, and in many ways annoyed and
troubled the occupants; but they were evil spirits sent by
the kingdom of darkness to impede the great work of
salvation carried on by this man of God.

No good end could be served by trying to raise the
powers of evil. But we wanted to see for ourselves, and
so when Mr. McClung was safely away at his two other
appointments, Nell, Herb, and I, and Zella Motheral, who
was the local milliner, and organist in the Church,
were not above doing a little table rapping in the interests
of scientific discovery.

On Hallowe’en night we got the perfect setting for an
evening with the spirits. Mr. and Mrs. McClung had gone
to Bethel to a Harvest Home Supper, and would stay the
night, because of the wild weather. Rain lashed the win-
dows, and the trees were agitated by the wind, whose
sudden gusts rattled every window and door in the house.

Nellie and I and Zella were entertaining the Epworth
League at the Parsonage, and as the coast was clear, the
activity of the evening was table rapping—and how the
table did quiver, and rise. It seemed to come up with
every heave of the storm.

A load of wheat had been stolen from a field granary
near by, and we asked the spirits to tell us who had
taken it. We named the letters of the alphabet, and as

348 CLEARING IN THE WEST

the table rapped we wrote down the letter. To our horror
the table rapped out the name of ————_-—— one of the
young men, who belonged to the League, but had re-
cently returned to Ontario. He was a College student
who had spent the summer working for a farmer, and
had gone back to pursue his studies. We asked the table
for the first name, and got it. It was not the name we
knew him by, but it corresponded to his second initial.

We were rather frightened over this, and felt we were
getting into deep water. We did not believe the charge.
The young man was the unlikeliest person in the wotld
to steal. He had been drawing wheat to the elevator for
his employer; and he could, of course, have taken a load
from the neighbor’s granary, and it could not be detected.
But he wouldn’t do this, we felt sure, and we solemnly
promised each other we would never tell what the table
had rapped out. It was done in fun, and we must not
attach any importance to it.

“We must not mistake ourselves for a court of law,”
Billy Rogers said.

Then we tried a little mesmerism. Tom Simpson, who
was aclerk in a dry goods store, and had some experience,
would mesmerize me. Tom and I had agreed that we
put on a fine act of this kind, and I knew what I was
supposed to do. We had talked it over one day when I
was in the store. So this seemed to be the night, with
every condition right—-the wild night, with groaning
trees, weird sounds at the windows, and doors, as the
storm circled the house.

Tom tied a silk handkerchief around his head to help
him to concentrate, and looked me steadily in the eye to
give me my orders. I stared back in silence, and sup-
pressed my desire to laugh; the company sat on all the
available chairs, with an overflow meeting on the floor,
but I held myself rigid and calm, not moving a muscle.
The thought-waves were running, and I must receive
them.

When the suspense began to be painful, I turned and

TREHERNE 349

wa.ked to the door, slowly, and impressively, looking
straight ahead of me, like a sleep-walker, and went up-
stairs, returning with a comb in my hand. (Tom had told
the company that this was what I should do.)

There was a distinct gasp of surprise when I came
back, with the comb.

“Now she is completely under hypnotic influence,”
Tom said grandly, “and knows no mind but mine. Mur-
ders have been committed by innocent people when under
this influence. Indeed that is a strong argument against
hypnotism in any form. The strong exploit the weak,
and send them on dastardly errands. It is a power for
righteousness, if properly used. I could impose on Miss
Mooney now, a deep hypnotic sleep which would last until
I released her, a sleep in which all the powers of nature
would gain strength, and build up her physical being.
That is the beneficent side of hypnotism.”

Nell began to get frightened. ‘Take her out, Tom,”
she said anxiously, “I can’t bear to look at her.
She looks so vacant ....J didn’t think you could mesmer-
ize her. I thought she had a stronger mind than yours
....She may never come right... .”

“T’ll give her two more things to do,” Tom said, “then
T’ll release her.”

I knew what they were and I did them. I went into the
kitchen and brought back a sandwich which I gave to Ed
Roberts, and then took off Zella’s beads and fastened
them around my own neck.

“Can you make her sing,” Zella asked, trembling with
excitement—she had read “Trilby’’, too.

“I would rather not try,” Tom said. “It would be too
hard on her at first. That sort of control takes practice.
There would be no value in it anyway, she would sing
only in her own voice, but with practice I could lend her
mine.”

“Do you mean you could make her sing something she
doesn’t know?” Billy Rogers asked.

Tom explained:

350 CLEARING IN THE WEST

“At the moment she knows nothing except what I
let her know.”

“Gosh! that’s tough on her, and her a teacher,” Billy
laughed. “She’ll lose her job if that’s all she knows.”

I wanted to look about me, but I couldn’t do that, so
I held to the vacant stare, and the audience were plainly
impressed.

“Take her out,” they were calling.

“I’m scared.”
“So amIf.... this has gone too far.”
“T thought it was all a joke at first .... but I see it’s

the real thing.”

Tom came over to me and eyed me solemnly. Then he
clapped his hands before my face. I stared on. I decided
I’d give Tom a few minutes of anxiety. I kept on star-
ing.

Tom turned pale, and began to shake me. There were
cries all around me—someone ran for water—Nell was
bathing my face. Someone called “I’m going for the doc-
tor.”

That settled it—Dr. Lamont was one of my trustees.
I came back in a hurry, with a fine show of wakening up
from a long sleep. When we sat eating our sandwiches,
and drinking coffee, I heard some interesting things.

“You couldn’t look like that if you had been fooling
us,” Zella said, “so empty, and vacant, just like the people
in the asylum. At first, I thought you were just doing it
for fun, but I soon saw you were really mesmerized; and
it’s awful. Tom you must promise never to do it again.”

“I’m done,” Tom said solemnly. “I never had such a
scare in my life.”

I think our amateur performance had a good effect
after all. It convinced us of how easily people can be
deceived.

We turned to something saner, and more satisfying
after that, for we began the study of the “Trial Scene
in the Merchant of Venice,” which we put on at the
Christmas concert, and repeated it at Midsummer.

TREHERNE 351

There was a peculiar aftermath of our adventure in
the realm of psychical] research which troubled us greatly.
Suspicion began to point to the young man who had gone
east, and we had a bad time over it fearing that there
had been a leakage from our party. It is so easy to throw
suspicion. There was talk of bringing the young man
back from Ontario to be tried at the Spring Assizes for
theft. But in the midst of our anxiety the case was
settled anonymously. So the matter has remained a
mystery, which, so far as I know, was never cleared up.

I have a pleasant recollection of the lovely autumn
days in Treherne.

The parsonage stood beside the Church, and both,
facing east, looked out across the road to the deep ravine
whose wooded banks broke the monotony of the prairie.
The country around Treherne has more trees than many
parts of Manitoba and with its deep black loam, and
abundant rainfall, the farmers were prosperous and con-
tented. Still, even there, the call of the far country had
come to some, and Mr. A. J. Cotton left his farm that
year, and went still farther west to Swan River to get
free land for his boys.

When he wrote back that he had harvested fifty-five
bushels of wheat to the acre on his new farm, we found
it hard to believe. But knowing Mr. Cotton we could not
very well doubt him, and besides we did not want to be
like some of the Ontario people who doubted everything
that came out of the west, every good thing, I mean. So
this story had to be accepted.

When four o’clock came, and I got my desk tidied and
the boards cleaned, and the last item of the day’s busi-
ness closed, I was glad of the period of relaxation before
supper time. There was a hammock made of barrel
staves, with a rope run through auger holes on each end;
and covered with a blanket and plenty of pillows hung
between two trees, at the North-east corner of the Par-
sonage. And there I often lay, when the weather was fine,
looking up at the clouds. I always had a curious sense of

352 CLEARING IN THE WEST

detachment in that hammock suspended between heaven
and earth. My past seemed to be below me, and my
future above me, and my whole mentality was quickened
and kindled as I lay there. I remember how ecstatically
I repeated:

“Out of the night that covers me,
Dark as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul.”

“Who would dare the choice?
Neither or both to know?

The highest quiver of joy
The most exquisite pang of woe.”

I was often in that grand mood that my family used
to refer to derogatively, as being on my high horse, but
they were quite mistaken in their estimate of it. It was
really an innocent exaltation that always left me the bet-
ter for it.

It was the one hour of the day, when I let my mind
run free, and over and above the sounds of the little town
with the clip-clop of horses feet on the hard roads, the
voices of children at play, puffs of a gasoline engine at
the elevator, there came in from the country the rhy-
thmic sounds of a threshing machine in a grain field near
by. Ours was a world of action and effort, a battle
against time. I knew the fear that always drives the
farmer, of frost, and covering snow, which deprives the
cattle of their easy grass, and the finality of the freeze-
up. ... Indoors, I knew busy women were prodding big
black stoves to greater efforts; others were frantically
peeling potatoes from a wash tub on the floor, long tables
were set through “the room,” oilcloth covered, with thick
white dishes, and a few of the good ones, grudgingly put
out for the threshers.

Often, too, as I enjoyed that hour under the trees my
thoughts ran into the future with a tingling sense of

f

TREHERNE 353

danger. I knew there was no security in life... . no
security for women anyway. They could make such
tragic mistakes. .... I had seen it in my twenty years
of life .... Had I any reason to think I might escape? I
was glad I had found the McClung family... .

I loved the table conversations and the activities of a
parsonage. I knew I had a place in their affections, too,
all of them....

If I could only be like Mrs. McClung—sweet, placid,
serene, “whose life flowed on in endless song, above
earth’s lamentation’, who had a gift for goodness as
others have for music. But I knew that could never be!
And I wanted to write, and how could I write unless I
lived and felt, and sorrowed—and living was dangerous.
Still, I had no desire to stand off in the side lines all my
life. And besides there was Wes. I never got far in
my thinking without coming to him. He believed in me;
he said no one could tell a story as well; no one could be
more convincing; and when he became engulfed in doubts
and fears, and at enmity with the doctrines of the church,
and his father’s stern theology, and belief in eternal
punishment, he had been helped by my exposition of the
plan of salvation. I believed that when we are not asked .
whether or not we wanted to be born, God would not
lightly condemn us to suffer for ever, no matter what
we had done. I had welcomed the sane theology of Robert
Elsemere and John Ward, Preacher.

Wes and I had walked for miles in Manitou threshing
out our beliefs, and I thought of him often as I lay watch-
ing the pageant of the sky. He had suffered in reputa-
tion from being a minister’s son; not that he had ever
done anything very wrong, but because he loved fun and
company, and athletics, and had played cards. He had
been in Toronto at College when I was in Winnipeg at the
Collegiate, and during that time we had written each
other every week high-minded letters of theological and
literary import, and I knew that a delayed letter made
me very miserable.

<=

354 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I would not need to lay aside my ambition if I mar-
ried him. He would not want me to devote my whole life
to him, he often said so. He said I always called out
the very best that was in him, and I knew I was filled
with a great sense of well-being when we were together,
for he seemed to light all the candles of my mind. We
wondered if this could be love; we were disposed to think
it was, but we had a sort of gentleman’s agreement that,
if at any time either of us found out that there was
something beyond all this, we would not hesitate to inti-
mate to the other that such was so. And there would be
no scenes, no recriminations; and we would go on liking
each other always.

On my birthday he sent me an opal ring, which I kept
in the pocket of my valise and did not wear—to save ex-
planations. I found it always hard to speak of the things
that mattered most, and when I heard girls tell of the
proposals of marriage they had received, repeating con-
versations relating thereto, I was distinctly uncomfort-
able. There was a certain indecency in it, I thought, and
a betrayal of confidence equivalent to the showing of
letters, or listening at keyholes. So I said nothing at
home of the young man in the drug store. There would
be plenty of time for that .... and if either of us found
out we had made a mistake there would be no explana-
tions to make.

I had moments when my conscience chided me for in-
dulging in this period of rest. Hard-working people such
as we were, were ever suspicious of leisure, and even
sat down with a feeling that had an element of guilt in
it. I often wished I could stifle that nagging voice that
seemed to tell me all waking hours should be hours of
effort.

One day my peaceful hours in the hammock were in-
terrupted. One of the little girls in my Junior Class
came to me after four, and I knew she had something on
her mind, when she asked me if she could wait and walk
home with me. She was an appealing little thing, very

TREHERNE 355

tractable and sad—far too sad for a young thing. I knew
the family history, or part of it.

When we left the school, she took my hand and said:

“Teacher, I wish you would come and see my mother
—not tonight, but some time when I tell you. She is mad
nearly all the time, because she’s so tired. There are too
many of us and she’s sick again. And she may get an-
other baby soon. She always gets a baby before the last
one can walk, and it makes her mad. And teacher she can
see you in the hammock, and it makes her worse mad.
She says some people have all the luck. She never can
get a rest, because there are too many of us. Please
teacher, maybe you wouldn’t go in the hammock no more,
for a while .,.. my mother says hard things about you,
Teacher, just because she’s all tired out. Maybe it would
make you mad, if you knew.”

J assured little Evadel] that I would not be a bit mad,
and maybe we could think of some way her mother could
get a rest, and I would stay out of the hammock tonight,
anyway.

The next day I took counsel with the other teacher,
who had been longer in the neighborhood than I, and who
was always ready to help a family in need. She knew
Evadell’s family quite well. She told me the father worked
on the section, drank when he could get it, (Treherne was
under local option, but Holland, eight miles away, had two
bars), and was not any too fond of work. The mother,
she said, was a bitter-tongued Irishwoman, whom it was
hard to help. When the Forester’s Lodge had sent her a
turkey for Christmas, she was too proud to accept it and
sent it back, telling them to keep their charity for them
that asked for it. She would let her children go hungry
rather than take anything from anybody, and she was
never so happy as when she was in pitched battle with
her neighbors.

Miss W.
for them.

“T tried it,” she said, “when I came. I made a dress

did not think anything could be done

356 CLEARING IN THE WEST

for Evadell, and she wouldn’t let her wear it. She has a
hard time, but she makes most of it herself. I don’t even
blame her man for drinking. She’d drive any man to
drink with her tongue. Go back to the hammock when
your day’s work is done, in peace, and forget Mrs. N. .
If she weren’t mad at you it would be somebody else.”

But I did not feel just right about it. The next day
I went to see Mrs. N. , and I found her in high
spirits. She was not the bedraggled, discontented woman
I had expected to find. Her conversation rang along the
line of past victories over her neighbors, and the acid
replies she made to the people who had tried to help her.

“Of course,” she said, “I know I have too many child-
ren, and there are times when I get out of temper and
wish I had never got married. I’ve often said that if it
were not for just the clear disgrace of it, I would rather
be a withered-up old maid school teacher like Miss Harris,
or what you’ll be yourself some day... .”

I came away soon after that, and tried all the time I
was in Treherne to smooth the path of poor little Evadell,
who had been so unfortunate in her choice of a mother.

How inescapable are our family connections! Though
we have no voice, or hand, in saying into what family
we shall be born, we find ourselves there, bound forever,
blessed or marred, helped or hampered, by a relation
which was forced upon us.

CHAPTER XXXXII
THE ROYAL VISIT

LorD AND LADY ABERDEEN were in Rideau Hall at Ottawa
at this time representing the Queen in Canada.

Lady Aberdeen had sponsored a plan the year before
for bringing English girls to Canada, and in her thorough
way had done the work of choosing the girls herself, and
selecting the homes. It happened that the Treherne Dis-
trict had received several of these young visitors, and
the Governor and Lady Aberdeen were coming to visit
their little wards.

Great were the preparations for the official visit;
everyone felt the excitement of having royalty come to
our little community. The people who had met Lady
Aberdeen and her two secretaries the year before were
not so panicky as we who had only our own imagination
to draw on.

Mrs. Rollins, at whose home Nellie James, one of the
English girls, was living, told me when I was at her place
for dinner that Lady Aberdeen was just the plainest,
loveliest woman anyone could wish to meet. ‘You'd think
she had been brought up on a farm herself, she is so
understanding. She asked me for a quilt pattern I was
making, mind you, and I think would have been even
more chatty and friendly if it hadn’t been for the two
secretaries, who were along with her. They watched her
pretty close. And Nellie had told me a lot about her Lady-
ship .... I would like nothing better than to have her
come and stay a week. But of course she has many
places to visit.”

Nellie James, the white skinned, brown eyed seven-
teen-year-old adventurer, who had come across the sea
to make Canada her home, was a good ambassador from

367

358 CLEARING IN THE WEST

the old land to the new; for Nellie had the gifts and graces
which made her a popular member of the community.
She could sing, play the piano, and recite, and she was
always ready to do what she could.

One of her popular numbers was the “Cotter‘s Satur-
day Night,” and as the scene unfolded, it was easy to see
Nellie as the eldest girl who came home, “with love spark-
ling in her ee’, perhaps to show a braw new gown, or
bring her sair won penny fee, to help her parents dear,
if they in hardship be.”

Nellie had other selections too, and on the first of July
was ready with:

“Breathes there a man, with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said
This is my own, my native land.”

Lady Aberdeen had chosen a good home for Nellie,
when she sent her to Mr. and Mrs. Rollins. The nation-
ality was the right one—Scotch from Inverness; they
were the pillars of the Presbyterian Church, and owned
the one baby-grand piano in the little town, and their big
living room was the scene of many gatherings. The night
the teachers and the choir of the church were entertained
there, Nellie and Fanny Rollins, the daughter of the
house, in white aprons and caps (the caps brought by
Nellie) served us from a long table which ran through the
archway, between the dining room and living room, and
Mrs. Rollins told us proudly that the girls had done all
the cooking except the turkey dressing; and after dinner
Nellie sang to Fanny’s accompaniment, “Drink to Me Only
With Thine Eyes”, “Ben Bolt”, and “Cherry Ripe”.

Misa E. , one of the other teachers, and an old-
country woman, whispered to me that the young Scotch
girl would be spoiled by being made so much of, and she
wondered at Mrs. Rollins putting her forward like this,
when she was really only a servant after all, even if Lady
Aberdeen had placed her. But no echo of this criticism

THE ROYAL VISIT 359

dulled the radiance of Nellie’s triumphs. She continued
in her happy way, a cheerful little emissary.

One of the other girls whom Lady Aberdeen had placed
was not so happy. She had a good home too, but her face
was full of gloom and discontent; she cried often, and
could not be comforted. Nellie was sent to spend a day
with her, but the source of her grief remained undis-
covered. When Lady Aberdeen came to see her, Jennie
admitted her mistress was kind, her room comfortable,
her work was easy, everyone was pleasant and friendly,
but she could not be happy eating with an iron fork and
tin spoon, and a knife with a black handle. “I fancy,” she
said, “that they always taste of onions.”

Lady Aberdeen allayed her grief—she would send her
a silver knife, fork and spoon for her birthday.

It was the wish of Lord and Lady Aberdeen that no
entertainment be given for them, for their time was so
short and they wanted to spend it visiting their wards.
Their private car, standing at the siding, became an ob-
ject of interest, but we did manage to keep the school
children from gathering around it, by constant appeals to
their honor. They must not fail in any act of courtesy to
these wonderful people, Queen Victoria’s representatives,
who were trying to help the people of Canada.

One sharp eyed sleuth from my room brought in a
fairly full report on the contents of the car, declaring
she got all her information quite honestly from the up-
stairs windows of the section house where her sister lived.
She said the secretaries wore grey flannel nightdresses,
and that the cook rubbed the pots with an onion, and
everyone of them had their own bed.

We knew the Aberdeens would return from the
western part of their trip in about a week, and would
pass through Treherne on the evening train, which made
a stop of ten minutes while the engine took water from
the tank beside the track.

Someone conceived the idea of presenting them with
an illuminated address. There would be plenty of time

360 CLEARING IN THE WEST

to read it, and it seemed to be a fitting and courteous
way of thanking them for coming. The post master, Alan
Ross, our local poet, wrote the address.

For a while there was some uncertainty in the matter
of the reading of it. A minister was the first choice, and
we had four Protestant Ministers and a Roman Catholic
priest. At first the Anglican seemed to travel next the
pole on account of His Excellency’s connection with the
Established Church in England. But it was urged by
some of the Non-conformists that the Anglican minister
could not read without intoning and besides this was a
citizen’s affair, and should have no ecclesiastical flavor.
Some one suggested the auctioneer as a highly suitable
reader, accustomed to public speaking, and this would
carry the matter away from denominational controversy.

The address set down in Alan Ross’ neat writing, and
tastefully framed in golden oak, looked rather bleak and
bare, and a bit austere, so someone suggested that it be
illuminated in gold and colored ink. There was a man who
lived back in the hills, who could do beautiful work, and
had india ink, and gold and silver paints. It would cost
five dollars, but what of it? We had not the privilege of
addressing the Queen’s representative every day!

The address was illuminated or rather decorated. It
came back in a scroll rolled on an oak roller, and from
the faint glimpse I caught of it, and from the auctioneer’s
description afterwards, “illuminate” was the one word
which should not be applied to it.

It had birds with tape flowing from their bills, acorns
and oak trees, summer cottages and ships at sea, and for
a background there were clouds and elevators, threshing
machines, and haystacks to give the local color, and the
script was done in early English, in four colors.

When the train pulled in a messenger went to the
private car, and asked their Excellencies if they would
come into the station, which they did, umbrellas in hand,
for the night was raining with all the black insistence of
a November downpour.

THE ROYAL VISIT 361

The station was full and all the bracket lamps were set
in high gear, but unfortunately were placed too high on
the walls to be effective, so some of the company carried
lanterns. There had been some delay in getting the
address back from the illuminator, but it arrived just as
the train drew in, and when their Excellencies had low-
ered their umbrellas, and were placed under the brightest
lamp, the address began. The Reeve had briefly stated
that it was the unanimous desire of the citizens to present
a few words of appreciation; and then the auctioneer
started in very well:

“To Your Excellencies,

Lord Aberdeen, Governor General of Canada, and
Lady Aberdeen:

We, the citizens of Treherne, desire to express to you
our deep appreciation of your Excellencies’ visit to our
part of your Dominion and also—”

Dan stuck fast here. He said afterwards it looked
more like a piece of knotted fringe than a word.

‘“‘Where’s Alan Ross? He wrote this-——”

Alan Ross was in the crowd but had not brought his
glasses.

I was wedged in behind a big man and could not see
very well, but I saw a lantern was being held up by some-
one over Dan’s head, and after an uncomfortable pause,
a new voice, deep and foreign, was reading:

“ Successful’,” I think that is the word, long S’s you
know—a bit confusing in the old English script.” ‘“Suc-
cessful efforts of Lady Aberdeen in the matter of coloni-
zation.” “I, believe that is what it is... Very kind, I
am sure,” the deep voice commented. The Governor
General of Canada was reading his own address, and
replying to it, and doing all without embarrassment or
condescension.

Dan took hold again.

“We beg to assure you, that by your united efforts
the bonds of the Empire are being drawn increasingly
closer———”’ but there he stuck.

362 CLEARING IN THE WEST

The Governor took the address and got another sen-
tence from it, which put Dan back on the track. With a
mighty effort, and a little improvising Dan got through
with the address, and though the sentiments may not
have been all that Alan Ross wrote, it conveyed the idea
very clearly that we were trying to tell the regal visitors
that we liked them very much.

The Governor thanked us for the address, and told
us he would always prize it, and Lady Aberdeen thanked
us, and the rain poured down in a river from the sloping
station roof; and the night was as black as ink, as we
stood watching their car at the rear of the train, as it
pulled away from us over the long trestle across the big
ravine, and we sang:

“For they are jolly good fellows,” with right good-
will. And I hope every address they received carried
as deep an admiration as ours.

The only other time I saw the Aberdeens was in Fre-
mont Temple in Boston, in 1917, where they were speak-
ing on their Anti-Tuberculosis work in Ireland. I was
lecturing for the National Suffrage Association and had a
place on the same program. I had tea with them after-
wards and reminded them of the address presented to
them in Treherne that rainy November night. They re-
membered it very well, they told me; and said they were
“much touched” by it.

CHAPTER XXXXIII
THE FARM IN 1895

IN the summer of 1895 when I went home for the holi-
days I could see that I was needed at home and so sent
in my resignation to the Treherne School Board. My
sister Hannah was married and living in New York
State and Lizzie and her husband and their little son
George had gone to a farm eight miles from Holland, and
Mother was rather sad about these changes.

“No matter how many children you have”, she would
say, “It all comes to the same in the end and when you
need them they are gone”. We were fortunate in getting
a relative of my Mother’s to come and keep house for
us and she was glad to come with her little five-year-old
girl. Mrs. Brown was a very efficient and amiable young
woman but even if she had been less efficient or amiable
Mother would have made light of her short-comings for
was she not of the household of faith, having had one of
the Scotch aunts from Holland and formerly from
“Enbro” for her grandmother?

I am always glad I had that last year at home for I
saw then the western prairie in full bloom, with its be-
wildering abundance, and I like to think of it as it was
then with work enough for everyone and a clear assur-
ance that anyone that would work could be clothed and
fed and be able to Jay aside something too for their old
age.
My brothers, Will and Jack, had a threshing machine
then and with all the fall work promised, and with fine
clear weather and a heavy crop the whole neighborhood
hummed with activity. In the harvest time under deep
blue skies the country lay one great golden tapestry
shaded from the tawny hues of the ripe grasses through

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364 CLEARING IN THE WEST

the greens of the late crops into the solid yellow gold
of the ripe grain. Machines at that time had not driven
out the men and the harvest fields employed, not only all
the available men in Manitoba, but every fall the rail-
ways brought out men from Ontario and Quebec.

At threshing time, many prayers ascended for good
weather in the churches in the accustomed phrases.
Equally fervent were the strange voices that “troubled
the gold gateways of the stars’? with the same request.
“God knows I am not one of these pests that bother Him
about every little thing,” said old Bob Peters, who lived
beside the river, “but I certainly do get down on my
knees at threshing time and ask for decent weather. It
is nothing to Him and it means a lot to us.” Threshing
time healed up many an old sore too, for everyone was
needed and the old feuds had to be forgotten.

“I would not have put up with her sauce,” a women
said of her sister-in-law who had been visiting her all
summer from the States,” only I knew I needed her in
threshing time.”

It was for the threshing that sauerkraut was put up
in barrels (chopped by a new spade) and green tomato
pickles were made; red cabbage and white were chopped
up with onions, vinegar, cloves and sugar, corn scraped
from the cobs, and all kept in stone crocks. Every sort
of cake that would keep was baked and hidden. The
woman who had nothing ready for the threshers was
almost as low in the social scale as “the woman who had
not a yard of flannel in the house when the baby came.”

What a day it was when the machine pulled into the
yard with the great powerful engine drawing the high
and cumbrous separator. The old horse-power drawn by
three teams of horses though really more picturesque,
was never such a sight as the snorting Traction Engine
drawing its great red and white trailer, followed by the
water-tank. And what a deep mark was left in the earth
by the huge engine-wheels with their lugs patterning the
black soil. Even though the work in the house was press-

THE FARM IN 1895 365

ing everybody came out to witness the arrival of the
Machine as it made its way majestically to the first set
of stacks and drew in between them cautiously, and what
a temptation it was to wait to see the carriers run up
and the canvas spread and the great belt beginning to
turn, and the pitchers climbing up on the stacks from
the highest part of the separator, there to wait for the
signal to start to throw down the sheaves to the plat-
form below where the two band-cutters stood with their
knives to cut the bands. When the word was given
and the great belt began to turn and the white canvas
of the carriers slowly revolved, gathering speed every
second until the rhythmic sounds settled into a roaring
hum the yellow straw was thrown from the top of
the carriers ike a cloud of gold smoke that veered and
twisted in the wind! When the pile of straw grew so high
it had to be removed the “straw horses” advanced with-
out anyone telling them, one on each side of the straw
pile, and by means of the straw rack to which they were
hitched one at each end, they drew the pile to one side and
turning around stood at attention until the pile was again
high enough to be taken away. When a team was trained
to do this they became valuable possessions to their
owner and their services were well paid for.

The best paid-for job was that of the engineer and
the next best the ‘feeder’, that is the man who stood
between the band-cutters and fed the sheaves into the
machine. This was not only hard work but it had con-
siderable danger in it both from the knives of the band-
cutters and from the mouth of the machine where a
hand might be caught in the cylinders. Will was the
separator boss and did the feeding himself. Jack was the
engineer and it was a matter of great pride that there
had never been an accident of any kind around the
machine.

Will and Jack paid big wages and expected their men
to work long hours, and not to waste a minute, for the
time element was everything in threshing. Always there

366 CLEARING IN THE WEST

was the danger of a break in the weather. Wet weather
was everybody’s loss. The men received no wages when
they were not working and the farmer had to go on feed-
ing the gang. So everyone hurried the work along with-
out a grumble. ... I have seen the machine running by
the light of burning straw to get a stack finished. But if
the men had to work hard and long, Jack and Will worked
harder than any of them, for when the work was over for
the night they often had to stay behind to repair some-
thing on the engine or separator. But so far as I can
remember everyone remained good humored. One man
did say that working on the Mooney outfit was like heaven
in one regard—there was no night there!

For three weeks that fall—1895—I helped to cook for
the threshers, beginning at Will’s place, then our own
and then George’s, with two days or so at a neighbor’s
whose wife had no help. It was hard to get help in the
house for the farmer’s daughters all had plenty of work
at home and there were no Employment Bureaus for
women in the cities and very few women had come from
the Old Country. There were the Crofters from Scot-
land who lived in a settlement in the Tiger Hills, but they
had their own small farms and seems to have work enough
for all their women too. I remember hearing one woman
who lived in Wawanesa at this time lament the fact that
everyone in this country was so well off that no one
needed to work for anyone else.

The farmers kept no hours when the crop was being
handled and the whistle of the engine tore through the
dark dawn every morning when it seemed the room had
hardly had time to get dark after we had blown out the
lamp. But in a second or two the raucous voice of the
alarm clocks repeated the message both upstairs and
down that it was time to get up and in a few minutes
lights twinkled from the windows, and before there was
light enough to see columns of smoke were rising into
the morning air and the business of the day had begun.
Even the roosters would begin to crow hearing the bustle

THE FARM IN 1895 367

in the farmyard and the hens would scold drowsily know-
ing well that they had no call to be up before daylight. But
there was no rest after that first blast from the engine,
for the fireman, who had been out since three o’clock
getting up the steam would sound a longer blast, if the
lights did not show in the windows.

The first man up put on the fire in the kitchen stove
and put on the kettle full of water and then went out to
feed the horses. No matter how the fire crackled in the
stove I always came shivering into the dark kitchen and
found it hard to waken up bright and ready for the day’s
work, but there was no time to think about persona] con-
cerns for the men had to be fed. We prepared all we
could the night before and had sliced the bacon and
peeled the boiled potatoes and had pans of them ready to
put in the oven dotted over with pieces of butter and
sprinkled with pepper and salt, and soon two frying pans
of bacon were sending out their cheerful incense and
another pot of eggs was set to cook. Boiled eggs were
easier to get ready than fried ones and to have to stop
to remove the shell slowed the men up a little, and that
was a good thing for them for they were disposed to eat
too quickly. The coffee was made in big blue enamel pots
and there was no question of timing or measuring. There
was just one rule—plenty of coffee and let it boil until the
men came in.

It seems to me that the coffee was always excellent
and it was not dated or even fresh. It came from the
store in big paper bags and was kept in a stone crock with
a lid and no one knew how it had been dried or ground or
when. The table, made as long as the size of the room
allowed, was covered with oilcloth and had sugar-bowls
and cream pitchers at intervals with a cruet-stand in the
middle, a fine big silver affair with at least five compart-
ments for pepper and salt, mustard, oi] and vinegar in
glass containers. And then there were glass pickle dishes
set in silver stands with a hook on the side to hold the
fork and the glass was colored, one in green the shade

368 CLEARING IN THE WEST

of an unripe tomato and the other one ruby-red and very
beautiful.

We sliced bread, a loaf at a time, and the table had
plates of baking powder biscuits and pitchers of syrup
and prints of butter. I thought our print was prettier
than any of the neighbours’ for it had three heads of
wheat on it with a Greek key border.

At noon we often had soup as well as the meat and
vegetables, though some of the men were disposed to
belittle the value of soup for they said it filled you up but
you soon got hungry after it. It did not “stick to your
ribs like meat and pototoes,’”’ but I noticed we never had
any left over. There was a keen satisfaction in cooking
for people who enjoyed their meals like these hungry
men, and I loved to see the great platters of hot roast beef
beginning to show the pattern, knowing that a further
supply was being sliced off in the kitchen, and that big
pots of mashed and buttered potatoes and turnips were
ready, too, to re-fill the vegetable dishes, and that the oven
was full of baked rice pudding well filled with raisins, and
that the big white pitchers on the table were full of
thick cream, and if the worst came to the worst, that is
if they cleaned up everything, we still had the pantry
shelves full of pies and a brown crock fuli of doughnuts.

There was considerable friendly rivalry in the matter
of feeding the threshers and there were dark stories told
of certain places where they got no raisins in their rice
pudding and nothing but skim milk to eat with it, and
where the pies were made of dried apples even though at
that time we were able to get barrels of gravensteins
from Nova Scotia and northern spies from Ontario.

In spite of the presence of fresh apples, raisin pie held
it place in popularity. My brother George had a house-
keeper that fall, a Mrs. Porteous from Kincardine, who
could make a wonderful pie of what she called “pluens,”’
an open pie with whipped cream, and these vanished
like the mists of the morning, when the “gentry” as she
called them caught sight of them. I objected to whipping

THE FARM IN 1895 369

the cream saying that plain cream was just as good but
the old lady held firm. “Whipped cream is a bit of style”
she said, ‘‘which I daresay threshers never have had be-
fore, and they won’t forget it. It is something extra and
will surprise them. Did you ever hear of the second mile?
Well that is what this whipped cream is and to see those
pies sitting there all fluffed out white as snow rests me
more than an hour in bed.”

She was a stout old lady who could not get around
very well but she sat at the table and rolled out pies and
biscuits. We had a young fellow to peel potatoes and
carry water and wood for us, and someway we managed
to feed the men. But when the three weeks were over
and I could go back home my bones ached with fatigue.

The farmers in these days were rugged individualists.
They changed work when necessary but each kept his
affairs to himself quite jealously. The first real co-opera-
tive effort came when someone suggested a “Beef-Ring”,
and outlined a plan whereby each farmer might have
fresh meat in the summer. Once a week an animal was
butchered and divided according to a diagram. The next
week when another farmer did the butchering there
would be a different distribution of the meat so that as
the season went on each farmer would receive the same
amount and portions of the meat.

The plan worked very well at first, but with the com-
ing of better crops and prices the farmers began to reason
that they were foolish to bother with their own meat
when they could buy it at the butcher shops. Wheat was
the thing that brought in the most money and to the
raising of wheat they set all their energies, despising the
slower penny-pinching ways of former generations. It
was not long until there were farms which had not a cow
or a hen or a hill of potatoes. Particularly was this true
when the younger generation were in command. The
older people watched this development with alarm and
disapproval, and shook their heads. No good could come
of it they said.

370 CLEARING IN THE WEST

I am glad I knew the farm in the days of abundance
before the evil days had come when machinery had driven
out the horses. I am glad I can think of the farmyard
with a ring of horses heads gathered around the sunken
tub below the pump or in a row across the pasture bars;
when the brood mares roamed the pasture hills, later to
be followed by frisking colts on their too-long legs. I am
glad I knew the farm when there were cows grazing along
the creek in deep contentment or lying in some shady
place out of the wind in the crisp October mornings when
I went to get them and where many a time I was glad
to warm my bare feet in the place where they had been
lying. Even the pigs, though they were greedy, squealing
and ungrateful brutes had their uses too, as we found
when we changed their pasture and used the old one for
a garden, and never had such a growth of cabbages and
potatoes and onions and peas, and flowers that grew as
high as the fence.

The first encroachment of the machine came after
Will and Jack got the threshing outfit. From then on
Sunday changed in its spirit and essence. Sunday had
always been to us a day set apart; a day when every
activity on the farm ceased. Even the hens were late
in getting out on Sunday mornings; the cows knew they
would not be milked early, and took their time in com-
ing up to the bars. It was the one morning of the week
when we saw patches of sunshine on the floor before we
left our beds, or could watch the golden radiance on the
walls. Everyone got dressed-up on Sunday with black-
ened shoes and “other clothes’; even on the Sunday that
had no church service in the Schoolhouse, for then
there would be visitors. Sunday’s work, as much as could
be, was done on Saturday, the house was made clean and
tidy, vases were filled with flowers, and the pantry shelves
with cooking. So Sunday was not only a day it was a
feeling of rest, contentment, friendliness, a sense of
peace and well-being. Even in harvest time, Sunday held
its place, horses were turned into the pasture for their

THE FARM IN 1895 371

day of rest too, and before we had driving horses, we
walked to church rather than drive a tired team!

But after the threshing-machine came Jack and Will
lost their day of rest. Sunday was the day the machine
had to be overhauled or one of them had to drive to
Brandon or Glenboro for repairs. There was always some-
thing that must be done. The dominance of the machine
had begun and none of us were far-seeing enough to know
the end.

CHAPTER XXXXIV
COMMENCEMENT

My last six months’ teaching took place at my old home
school, Northfield, whose bare surroundings I have des-
cribed in the Second Chance. It stood alone on a wide
expanse of prairie, for the land to the north was gravelly
and poor and there were no houses within a radius of two
miles, but the road from Wawanesa to Stockton and Glen-
boro ran past the door. The country west, south, and
east, was thickly settled.

We had one visit a year from the inspector, Mr. E. E.
Best, who lived in Manitou, and although his coming was
unheralded, officially, we always had an intimation that
he was hovering near. When that news was flashed along
the grapevine telegraph, that is, someone had seen him
near Glenboro and heading west, there were house-clean-
ings, window-washings, wood-pilings, and the teacher, re-
gardless of expense, wore her “other” dress and shiny
shoes every day. The children were urged to deal lavishly
in soap and water.

Blackboards that at other times carried forward the
struggles of yesterday, were now cleaned each night,
and their upper, unused sections were decorated with a
stencil, purple grapes and green leaves, with an edifying
and uplifting motto framed therein, inciting to greater
industry.

The pupils entered into all these preparations heartily,
for if the Inspector were pleased he would proclaim a half-
holiday. We did our own janitor work in the country
schools then. The first person who arrived lit the fire and
we took turns in sweeping the school. Twice a year it
was scrubbed, and had its windows cleaned.

That year Mr. Best tarried long in his coming and we

372

COMMENCEMENT 373

had to serub the floor twice before we had our visit. Mr.
Best was an ideal inspector and put every child in good
humor when he entered the room.

He had inspected Northfield when I was a pupil there
and had inspected each school I had taught, so I knew
him well. But I had a wholesome regard for his good
opinion. There was no sentiment in his inspection, but
a fine sense of blindfolded justice.

Mr. Best travelled the prairie trails in all sorts of
weather, covering an area of a hundred by sixty miles,
and nothing was hidden from his eyes, after he had spent
half a day in a school, but any teacher who was sincerely
trying to bring the pupils along need have no fears. Un-
like many inspectors, Mr. Best was a great teacher, and
took full charge of the classes. When he began his work
in a school it was no mere march-past that took place
He carried copies of The Popular Educator and the On-
tario School Journal with him, and always had some new
books to recommend.

The routine of my life at Northfield was a pleasant
one. I got up at seven, in the cold dark of the farmhouse,
opened the dampers of the round coal stove in the front
room and dressed beside it. Meanwhile Mrs. Brown was
preparing breakfast in the kitchen, porridge, bacon and
eggs, tea and toast—if she had time to make it.

I set out before sunrise, walking toward the kindling
east, the quarter mile to Will’s house. Then we drove to
the school, with the sleigh box filled with robes, picking
up the Kennedy children half way. The big round heater
filled with dry wood soon drove out the cold, and the busi-
ness of the day began.

No doubt we spent much energy in fighting the cold,
but we did not mind, and with furs and woollen clothing
managed very well.

January and February were cold months, but spring
was on its way, when March came blowing in with a great
snow storm, and in April we would hear the meadow
larks, and know that our deliverance was at hand. Even

874 CLEARING IN THE WEST

the cattle foraging through the straw stacks, hunting
vainly for a green blade, lifted their heads when they
heard the first liquid note of the little gray messenger.

The winter had its compensation too, in the skating
and curling rink at Wawanesa, and though it was three
miles away, Jack and I went two nights a week, and
skated until the manager began to turn out the lights.
When we came home gloriously hungry, we always
found a banked fire in the kitchen stove with oatmeal por-
ridge slowly cooking in the double boiler and this with
cream and brown sugar made an “After The Game”
supper, which has never been surpassed. I had no fears
of being overweight then, for I was trying hard to make
the even hundred. Mother was quite content to go to
bed on these nights and not worry about me, for had I
not the protection of a male relative?

The last night of the skating came, when the soft ice,
warned us that the spring was upon us, and before the
evening was over little pools of water had gathered in
the corners of the rink. We had the band that night,
and the music, no matter was the tune was, had a fate-
ful and solemn sound, for it was the end of the season—
and before another time of ice had come there would be
changes and partings, and the old crowd would be broken
up—we, who had such pleasant times together.

Beside the skating rink lay the curling rink, where the
older men threw the stones each night, and from which
the thunder of rolling stones travelling on ice, cracking
together and rolling away again, mingled with the band
music. It was all part of a scene which I like to remem-
ber—and which I knew that night would not come to me
again, for life was moving rapidly in my small world.

I was going to be married the next summer. I had
began to think seriously of marriage after Jack had told
me he was going to get married soon. I was quite settled
in my mind, and I knew I could be happy with Wes. We
did not always agree but he was a fair fighter, and I
knew I would rather fight with him than agree with any-

COMMENCEMENT 375

one else. I would not be afraid of life with him. He would
never fail me. He was getting on too. He had the drug-
store now in Manitou, and there were four little rooms
above it where we could live.

Wes. had come to see me in January, and to my great
relief was received by my family with real enthusiasm.
I had been a little bit anxious about this meeting from
both sides. I wondered what he would think of my people
-~—would they seem to him just plain country people who
ate in the kitchen, in their shirt sleeves—I wondered! Or
would he see them, as I saw them, clear thinking indepen-
dent people, more ready to give a favor than ask for one.
I thought of my mother especially—would he see what a
woman she was? Fearless, self-reliant, undaunted, who
never turned away from the sick or needy; for whom no
night was too dark or cold, or road too dangerous to go
out and help a neighbor in distress, who, for all her blunt-
ness had a gracious spirit, and knew the healing word for
souls in distress; who scorned pretense or affectation, and
loved the sweet and simple virtues. I wondered would he
see all this, or would there be just a trace of condescen-
sion in his manner, of which perhaps he might be un-
aware—

It troubled me, for I know that was one thing I could
not take, and he could not help. But these were my people,
and I would stand or fall with them.

I need not have worried. The first night he came, look-
ing so smart and handsome in a rough brown tweed suit,
he settled into the family circle like the last piece of a
crossword puzzle. He and mother were so enchanted with
each other I thought it best to leave them, when eleven
o’clock came, and went to bed.

The next morning mother came into my room before
I was up and said to me. “Nellie, you have more sense
than I ever gave you credit for, and I like your young
man—lI couldn’t have picked out a finer one myself. Now,
if you cannot get on, I’ll be inclined to think it will

376 CLEARING IN THE WEST

be your fault—and you certainly are getting something to
look at, as you always said you would.”

But the next night, which was his last—for he left
on the early train the next day, when I thought we might
have had a little time to talk, and Jack had obligingly
gone to bed early—mother announced that it was ten
o’clock and time for me to go to bed—

And I went—without a word, I went!

We were married on August 25th, at a quarter to
eight in the morning. The day before had been the per-
fect harvest day; with a heavy amber sunshine, lighting
up the golden fields, and gladdening the harvesters as
they drove the binders around the dwindling rectangles
of standing grain. There was not a breath of wind, or a
cloud in the sky, and the whole countryside was steeped
in the golden glory. Through the still air came the
clickety-clack of the binders; the drowsy sounds of con-
tented farm yards, cheerful barking of dogs, and cooing
of pigeons on the roofs of barns.

Wes. came on the four o’clock train, and I drove into
Wawanesa to meet him, and as we came along the wind-
ing road, with its lovely foliage, beginning to mellow into
the autumn tints, and up to the level of the plain, with
the Horse-Shoe Slough across the river, perfect in its
symmetry and grace, we stopped the horse to look at the
perfect scene of prairie beauty. We had not heard of
William H. Davies, but we knew what he meant when we
read, years afterwards, about the rainbow, and the coo-
koo song coming together, once, and perhaps never again.

The next morning we were all astir early, for this was
the day of days. But what a change had come in the
night!

The dark and stormy sky—the raging wind that tore
the leaves from the maple trees, and levelled the stand-
ing grain in the fields, and rattled every window in the
house, were poor omens for a wedding day!

We reached the church at 7:30—the Presbyterian
Church on the river bank (which had been kindly offered

COMMENCEMENT 377

to us, because it was larger than the little Methodist
Church), decorated now with sheaves of wheat and
beautiful flowers, and filled with the old friends from far
and near. I remember walking up the aisle with my
brother Will, while Miss Hopkins at the organ played the
wedding march—and I remember the solemn words of
the marriage ceremony .... A sea of faces, everyone
friendly—good wishes, and a great confusion of voices—
and a feeling of haste. Again the high windy whistle of
the train, as it came down the grade beyond the river,
heard in a lull in the storm, and a lot of rice, and laughter
——and mother, waving her hand, and the whole scene
moving away from us, as we stood on the back platform.

The trees were bending in the gale which seemed to
grow in fury and the rain which had held up until we
were up again on the plain, lashed the windows and
rattled like hail against the ventilators over our heads.

The pleasant harvest scene of the day before was
blotted out; cattle huddled in the shelter of the barns;
as we passed Ashdown and Hilton, the fields were de-
serted; the wheat and oats were bending and shelling.

Sudden the rain stopped and the wind too, grew less.
I think we had reached Baldur where my dear old teacher
lived, when we went out to the back platform hold-
ing the railing, just as I had done six years before, leav-
ing home for the first time, fearful, although the sun
was Shining. Now I was leaving again, and there was
no sun; nothing but dark and thunderous clouds covering
all the sky, but I was not afraid.

Fear of the future did not cross either of our minds.
We were sitting on the top of the world. Not that we
had any money to give us assurance. We had the four
little rooms above the store to go to and the rent was
paid for one month in advance. We had enough furni-
ture to begin housekeeping, bought on the instalment
plan, and we had agreed to pay interest at the rate of
2% a month. Wes. had an insurance policy for $2,000.
I cannot remember what we talked about, but I know we

378 CLEARING IN THE WEST

were hilariously, unreasonably happy, and confident, rich
in the things we did not know.

Even in that gloomy, threatening morning to ride on
the back platform of the train gave me a glorious feeling
of speed and adventure. We were off, and away!

Suddenly the landscape began to brighten, and the
farmhouses, barns, and fences lifted themselves out of
the gloom, and a gleam came on the steel ribbons run-
ning out beneath our feet. We looked up, and saw the
clouds were parting, and a bit of blue sky was showing
over the shoulder of a black cloud.

It was clearing in the West! Tomorrow would be fine!

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